THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


IDEAL 


TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

OR 

GEEEK  AND  KOMAN  BEFOEE  JESUS  CHEIST 


A  SERIES  OF  ESSAYS  AND  SKETCHES  DEALING 

WITH  THE  SPIRITUAL  ELEMENTS  IN 

CLASSICAL  CIVILIZATION 


E,"  G!  SIHLER,  PH.D. 

PROFESSOR    OF    THE    LATIN    LANGUAGE    AND    LITERATURE 

IN    THE    NEW   YORK    UNIVERSITY,    SOMETIME    FELLOW 

IN    GREEK    IN   THE    JOHNS   HOPKINS   UNIVERSITY 


Since  by  strength 

They  measure  all,  of  other  excellence  not  emulous. 

MiLicm. 


NEW  YORK 
G.   E.    STECHERT   &   CO. 

LONDON,  LEIPZIG,  AND  PARIS 
1908 


COPYRIGHT,  1908, 
BY  E.  G.  8IHLEE. 


All  Sight*  Reterttd. 


VcrtacalJ 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  A  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


ALL   LOVERS   OF   HISTORICAL   TRUTH 

ESPECIALLY   TO   CLASSICISTS   AND   CLERGYMEN 

WITH   THE   EARNEST   HOPE   THAT   THE   LARGE    EXTENT 

OF   THEIR   COMMON   DOMAIN   MAY  BE 

MORE   CLEARLY   SEEN 

THIS    BOOK 
IS    RESPECTFULLY   INSCRIBED 


PREFACE 

—  that  I  might  leave 

Some  monument  behind  me  which  pure  hearts 
Should  reverence. 

WOBDBWOBTH. 

THE  autumnal  frosts  of  life  are  apt  to  bare  many  a 
bough  which  in  our  own  springtime  had  delighted  our 
souls  with  the  beauty  and  the  promise  of  vernal  blossoms. 
And  so  too  in  the  case  of  classical  scholarship,  so  long  and 
so  strongly  attached  to  the  culture  and  educational  tradi- 
tions of  modern  times,  the  writer  cannot  but  feel  that  it 
has  come  to  be  in  evil  case.  Well  nigh  there  has  passed 
from  the  minds  of  men  the  conviction  that  the  Greeks  (an 
abstraction  glibly  made)  were  exemplars  and  exponents 
of  fair  and  perfect  humanity :  that,  being  without  the 
shackles  of  a  religion  or  creed  brought  to  them  from 
abroad,  they  had  achieved  the  ideals  of  our  human  kind. 

Of  late  indeed  and  particularly  in  the  zoological  phi- 
losophy of  modern  times,  they  have  not  figured  so  highly, 
but  have  been  reduced  to  furnish  convenient  social  data 
for  Herbert  Spencer,  as  do  the  Ashantee  negroes  of  Africa 
or  the  Papuas.  Of  all  the  didactic  and  doctrinal  fictions 
moulded  into  a  dogma,  not  one  is  so  apt  to  take  the  very 
heart  out  of  history  as,  e.g.,  Spencer's  thesis  that  individual 
man  is  but  a  cell  in  the  social  organism  —  whereas  he  is 
really  a  small  universe  in  himself  and  passes  through  this 
world  of  sense  and  seeming  absolutely  alone,  guided  and 
determined  by  himself  alone.  The  noisy  diversion  of  gre- 
garious joys,  the  prattle  of  quasi-common  concerns  may 
for  a  while  deceive  the  soul  of  man  as  to  his  essential  soli- 
tude and  as  to  his  personal  responsibility,  but  not  for 
always. 


vi  PREFACE 

This  book  is  written  in  the  full  conviction  that  man  is 
endowed  with  an  immortal  soul  and  with  a  transcendent 
responsibility  of  conscience  and  conduct,  a  responsibility 
rising  infinitely  above  social  convenience  or  convention, 
— and  that  man's  personality  is  the  highest  thing  in 
nature  known  to  us,  and  that  all  efforts  to  bestialize  man 
by  any  form  of  physical  or  zoological  hypothesis  must 
prove  futile  in  the  end. 

I  have  spent  some  thirty-six  years  in  reading  and  re- 
reading with  earnest  and  loving  concern  most  of  the 
writers  which  have  survived  of  classical  antiquity,  so- 
called;  I  have  also,  as  very  many  scholars  have,  examined 
and  attempted  to  determine  many  of  the  minor  problems 
possible  in  this  aftermath  of  our  own  time,  have  followed 
with  maturer  powers,  much  of  the  life  and  learning  of 
famous  classicists  from  Petrarch,  from  Erasmus  to  Bent- 
ley,  Ritschl  and  Mommsen  —  but  at  the  end  of  it  all  there 
has  come  over  my  soul  a  profound  melancholy.  So  much 
of  the  infinite  industry  I  see  about  me  seems  to  be  spent 
in  the  fond  belief  (hallowed  by  long  academic  tradition) 
that  Classic  Literature  was  something  absolute,  something 
precious  and  transcendent  in  itself,  that  the  addition  of 
a  monograph  no  matter  on  how  infinitesimal  a  detail  of 
classic  tradition  (though  destined  to  be  read  by  two  or 
three  specialists  alone,  perhaps)  was  an  adequate  object 
of  life  and  labor.  All  technical  scholarship  as  all  work 
of  man  has  a  moral  side  as  well ;  let  us  hear  Pascal : 
"and  finally  others  devote  their  lives  to  recording  all 
these  things,  not  to  become  wiser  thereby,  but  merely 
to  display  the  fact  that  they  know  them." 

But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  also  a  fashionable  de- 
preciation and  decrying  of  classical  scholarship  in  the 
zoological  philosophy  and  in  the  meek  and  vicarious  utter- 
ance of  the  same  in  many  mouths,  as  of  a  mere  department 
of  anthropology. 

To  return  :  Wilamowitz  of  Germany  and  many  others, 
eminent  and  brilliant  in  these  studies,  have  in  some 
measure  abandoned  for  the  Greeks  (glib  and  erroneous 
abstraction)  the  claim  of  perfect  humanity.  This  too  is 


PREFACE  vii 

to  be  laid  away  then  in  the  herbaria  of  human  fancy  and 
academic  nomenclature.  What  then,  we  say,  remains  ? 

Much  indeed  for  all  those  souls  who  desire  to  recover 
the  feeling  of  freshness  and  youth  and  to  bathe  their  spirit 
in  the  simple  directness  and  original  power  ever  dormant 
in  those  letters :  but  greater  I  believe  is  their  historical 
import.  They  show,  nay  they  are-,  in  great  measure,  the 
course  and  range  of  man's  powers  and  aspirations  :  and 
they  abundantly  reveal  this  to  us  in  our  concern  for  the 
higher  and  highest  things. 

I  propose  to  set  forth,  then,  for  younger  or  older 
scholars  and  for  all  those  readers  who  with  the  author 
hold  to  the  absolute  and  divine  worth  of  revealed  reli- 
gion, to  set  forth,  I  say,  what  was  the  course  and  character 
of  the  religion  and  worship,  of  the  morality  and  conduct, 
of  the  Greeks  and  Romans  among  whom  the  church  of 
Christ  came  up :  to  present,  very  largely  in  the  exact  words 
of  their  most  eminent  writers,  in  versions  made  for  this  work, 
their  views  or  aspirations  concerning  the  soul,  life  and 
death,  God  and  the  world  —  in  short,  whatever  we  may 
designate  as  the  spiritual  elements  in  classic  civilization. 
And  I  hope  to  accomplish  this  with  greater  exactness  per- 
haps and  with  greater  fairness  too  than  has  hitherto  been 
the  case. 

The  two  first  chapters  are  written  by  way  of  prelude : 
Culture  and  the  Human  Soul,  —  Humanism  and  the  Hu- 
manists. Why  are  these  themes  presented  first  ?  Because 
in  both  of  them  Classicism  attempted  or  attempts  to  re- 
duce Christianity  to  a  position  of  inferiority  or  even  of 
hostility;  further,  because  Classicism,  quite  justly,  has 
demeaned  and  still  does  demean  itself  as  one  of  the  purest 
forms  of  human  culture ;  and  because  it  is  of  lasting  im- 
portance to  see  whether,  when  Classicism  had  attained  an 
absolute  and  dominant  position  in  European  culture,  the 
fruits  of  that  tree  may  not  fairly  be  inspected  for  evidence 
of  its  practical  and  palpable  relation  to  spiritual  things. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAG* 

I.    CULTURE  AND  THE  HUMAN  SOUL       ....  1 

II.    HUMANISM  AND  THE  HUMANISTS        ....  24 

III.  GODS  AND  MEN  IN  HOMER  AND  HESIOD  ...  53 

IV.  THE  SEVEN  WISE  MEN.    JSsop          ....  79 

V.      VOICES   FROM   THE   LYRICAL   POETS       ....  96 

VI.    HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP  AMONG  THE  GREEKS   .  118 

VII.    THE    CRAVING    FOR    IMMORTALITY.     PYTHAGORAS. 

THE  MYSTERIES  OF  ELEUSIS.    GREEK  PIETY        .  131 

VIII.    THE  ANGER  AND  ENVY  OF  THE  GODS.    JESCHYLUS. 
HERODOTUS.   WITH   SOME  PERTINENT  NOTES  ON 

THE  GREEK  CHARACTER 148 

IX.    SOPHOCLES  OF  KOLONOS 173 

X.    THE  SOPHISTS  AND  THE  NEW  LEARNING.    EURIPI- 
DES        189 

XI.    THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS       ....  210 

XII.    HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY.    THE  SOCI- 
ETY DRAMA  OF  MENANDER.    EPICURUS  AND  ZENO  251 

XIII.  ACTUAL  WORSHIP   IN   GREEK    COMMUNITIES.    THE 

VOICE  OF  TOMBS 289 

XIV.  ROMAN  SPIRIT  AND  ROMAN  CHARACTER    .        .        .  312 

XV.    RITUAL    AND    WORSHIP    AMONG    ROMAN    INSTITU- 
TIONS         .                                                                 .  340 


x  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAOB 

XVI.    CICERO  OF  ARPINUM.    CATO  OF  UTICA     .        .        .    362 
XVII.    Two  ROMAN  EPICUREANS    .        .  .        .        .382 

XVIII.    L.    ANN^EUS    SENECA,    THE    VERSATILE,  AND    THE 

ROME  OF  SENECA  .  ,    402 


EPILOGUE  AND  APPIAN  WAY 431 

APPENDIX  TO  CHAPTER  II :  CHRONOLOGY  OF  HUMANISTS      .    435 
INDEX  OF  PHRASE,  NAMES,  AND  MATTER         ....    439 


CHAPTER  I 

CULTURE   AND   THE   HUMAN  SOUL 

CULTURE  is  a  much  quoted  term:  it  is  one  of  the  current 
coins  in  human  exchange  and  human  valuation,  standard 
and  absolute:  it  is  considered  meritorious  to  enhance  cul- 
ture even  in  the  slightest  degree:  to  be  called  uncultured 
is  a  severe  and  humiliating  designation.  Certain  lands 
claim  more  culture  as  a  whole  than  others.  Athens  claimed 
a  vast  preeminence  over  Bceotia  and  Thebes,  where  physi- 
cal excellence  and  good  eating  flourished  in  the  days  of 
Aristophanes:  Florence  in  the  Renaissance  and  in  a  meas- 
ure beyond  excelled  Rome  in  this  respect,  and  even  more 
outranked  Naples:  mere  physical  loveliness  and  large 
generosity  of  soil  and  charm  of  sky  and  sea  "always  seem 
to  deaden  and  dull  the  higher  mental  and  spiritual  powers 
of  the  dwellers  in  such  regions.  Who  would  compare 
Naples  with  Scotland  in  this  respect? 

The  German  cultured  class  is  having  a  severe  struggle 
at  the  present  time  to  withstand  the  imperious  call  to 
material  success,  to  wealth  and  worldly  power,  in  fact. 
A  recent  writer,  Oskar  Weissenfels,  would  find  a  panacea 
in  a  return  to  the  study  of  the  great  German  classics.  But 
apart  from  this,  his  book  deals  with  many  incidental  ques- 
tions warmly  and  searchingly.  Many,  he  justly  observes, 
are  so  shallow  as  to  take  social  etiquette  and  the  amenities 
of  that  life  as  culture.  One  cannot  deny  that  if  we  form 
an  exact  conception  of  culture  the  practical  view  of  the 
B  1 


2  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

matter  will  prove  exacting  in  turn.  Culture  is  a  condition 
of  certain  powers  in  man,  a  condition  of  reasonable  per- 
fection of  certain  powers  within  us.  Clearly  not  of  all 
powers.  The  professional  boxer  possesses  physical  powers 
cultivated  to  an  uncommon  degree.  The  overvaluation  of 
physical  culture  in  our  day  is  a  notorious  fact:  it  is  a 
matter,  however,  that  must  not  divert  us  much  at  this 
point. 

The  Greeks  themselves,  with  their  unmatched  faculty 
of  symbolism,  have  in  their  sculpture  created  a  type  of 
Hercules  which  is  essentially  coarse  and  vulgar,  and  with- 
out even  the  slightest  intimation  that  that  hero*  too  was  a 
saviour  of  primitive  society,  and  an  enemy  of  the  enemies 
of  mankind.  And  so  the  witty  Athenians  with  their  un- 
failing instinct  for  the  absurd  and  inconsistent  were  rather 
fond  of  producing  him  as  a  gigantic  eater  in  some  of  their 
comedies. 

To  return :  the  loudest  cry  of  the  present  time  is  that 
of  material  culture:  man  indeed  has  appropriated  force 
after  force  of  nature:  some  leaders  of  public  opinion  are 
fairly  intoxicated  in  the  sense  of  that  power,  and  bless 
human  kind  with  a  great  blessing  for  having  witnessed 
these  things:  none  of  which,  however,  has  essentially 
affected,  enhanced,  or  deepened  the  specific  powers  of  man, 
through  which  alone  true  culture  exerts  itself  —  for  I  do 
not  believe  that  trip-hammers,  telescopes,  or  Rontgen  rays 
have  added  one  hair's-breadth  to  the  essential  stature  of 
the  purely  human  powers. 

Futile,  too,  and  ecstatic  is  the  idea  of  the  indefinite  per- 
fectibility of  man  held  by  poor  weak  Rousseau  and  iterated 
by  many  of  the  modern  zoological  philosophers. 

But  let  us  proceed  in  a  somewhat  orderly  fashion  to  see 
how  in  modern  times  earnest  students  of  man  have  con- 
ceived of  culture  in  the  larger  movements  of  mankind  and 
particularly  of  the  classical  world. 

And  first  we  must  decline  to  see  in  "  humanity  "  so 
called  more  than  an  academic  or  literary  fiction:  the  grasp 
of,  and  sympathy  with,  the  best  thought  of  all  ages  is 
given  but  to  a  few  souls  among  the  millions.  Extraor- 


CULTURE  AND  THE  HUMAN  SOUL  3 

dinary  penetration  and  survey  of  some  one  great  student 
is  often  in  a  vague  and  awkward  fashion  credited  to  a 
whole  generation,  or  epoch  of  history  and  national  life. 
Thus  Aristotle  was  himself  a  veritable  cyclopedia  of  Greek 
achievement,  and  from  him  proceeded  the  movement  of 
pure  erudition,  soon  to  be  continued  under  circumstances 
of  dynastic  favor  and  generosity  at  Alexandria.  And 
still  the  world  of  central  Greece  was  then  rapidly  passing 
into  decay  :  the  debilitation  of  political  life,  the  with- 
drawal from  action,  the  contempt  for  labor,  the  decline 
of  the  family,  the  veneer  of  mere  rhetoric  and  sophistry, 
all  these  and  more  were  salient  features  in  that  world,  in 
which  the  most  cultured  of  Greeks  lived  his  life. 

Herder  ("  Ideas  on  the  History  of  Mankind  "),  a  pupil 
of  Spinoza  and  Shaftesbury,  was  a  Pantheist.  He  was  an 
enthusiastic  believer  in  the  fiction  of  a  Humanity  im- 
perishable while  the  souls  perish.  Humanity  is  the  great 
and  multiform  organ  of  God.  Man  rose  above  the  other 
beasts  but  gradually  :  his  upward  course  was  mainly  the 
blessed  sequence  of  his  perpendicular  gait  which  favored 
the  development  of  his  brain.  He  acquired  his  reason 
gradually.  The  Greeks  were  possessors  of  a  perfect 
humanity.  Human  nature  is  capable  of  indefinite  per- 
fectibility. Athens  was  the  mother  of  all  good  taste. 
Her  climate  and  marbles  were  advantageous  for  the  at- 
tainment of  the  Beautiful.  You  must  not  apply  Christian 
standards  to  the  practical  morality  of  the  Greeks,  an  ideal 
foreign  to  them.  They  were  as  far  advanced  as  we  are  : 
in  a  certain  point  of  view,  they  were  further  advanced. 
Their  political  fabrics  grew  and  perished  like  a  flower  in 
nature.  Like  Buckle  and  the  modern  zoological  philoso- 
phers, Herder  believed  that  political  history  followed  ever 
recurrent  natural  laws,  in  cycles. 

The  Gods  of  Greece  were  the  fairest  idols  of  human 
fancy.  They  have  perished.  Will  the  less  beautiful 
ones  also  perish? 

Of  the  Romans  on  the  whole,  Herder  speaks  with 
aversion.  Rome  was  the  tomb  of  Italy.  Rome's  con- 
quests are  an  object  of  his  abhorrence.  Rome  gave  noth- 


4  TESTTMONIUM  ANIALE 

ing  to  the  East  which  it  conquered.  The  Romans  brought 
no  light  into  the  world.  Her  culture  consisted  of  blossoms 
already  faded.  The  genius  of  Rome  was  not  that  of  national 
freedom  and  philanthropy.  He  hates  Rome  as  the  de- 
stroyer of  nationalities,  being  radically  different  in  his  esti- 
mate and  sympathies  from  Gibbon  or  the  later  Mommsen. 
Throughout  he  declines  to  recognize  any  element  of  design 
in  human  history.  Nations  are  simply  huge  plants  and 
when  blossom  and  fruit  have  had  their  unfolding,  the 
process  of  decay  sets  in  with  intrinsic  necessity.  To 
conceive  the  Roman  world  as  preparatory  of  Christianity 
would  be  unworthy  of  "  God,"  which  figment  differs  in 
Herder  not  essentially  from  the  cosmic  movement  of 
Herbert  Spencer.  The  movement  of  history  of  any  given 
nation  belongs  to  the  general  category  of  physical  phe- 
nomena, which  follow  each  other  in  endless  cycles 
of  growth  and  decay.  There  is  no  moral  freedom  and 
there  are  no  decisive  personalities. 

One  readily  recognizes  the  intellectual  sympathy  of 
this  curious  philosophy  with  his  friend  Goethe,  who 
helped  him  to  the  post  of  chief  clergyman  of  Weimar. 
Curious  post,  was  it  not  ?  A  religion  without  a  God,  a 
world  without  design,  without  objective  or  divine  laws  of 
life  and  conduct.  Herder,  like  Goethe,  is  your  typical 
pantheist  in  this  too,  that  there  is  not  in  him  a  trace  of 
moral  judgment  as  something  primal  and  absolute.  Even 
when  he  refers  to  things  essentially  immoral,  as  when  a 
sculptor  made  a  model  of  his  boy-concubine,  he  refers  to 
it  with  a  light  and  graceful  touch. 

Herder  had,  much  to  the  displeasure  of  his  erstwhile 
academic  teacher,  Kant,  passed  decisively  from  Deism, 
the  fashionable  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century,  to 
Pantheism.  Among  the  Deists  proper,  the  greatest  critic 
in  the  domain  of  letters  was  Lessing,  whose  virility  and 
veracity  greatly  excelled  that  of  Goethe. 

We  will  here  briefly  turn  to  Lessing's  famous  essay, 
"  Uber  die  Erziehung  des  Menschengeschlechts,"  the  last 
important  work  of  his  life,  published  in  1780.  Education, 
he  holds  (§  4),  gives  nothing  to  man,  which  he  could  not 


CULTURE  AND  THE  HUMAN  SOUL  5 

possess  himself  of,  by  himself  alone,  too ;  only  more 
quickly  and  more  easily.  Hence  —  and  this  is  the  very 
essence  of  Deism  —  revelation  gives  nothing  to  the  human 
race,  which  human  reason,  left  to  itself,  would  not  reach, 
but  it  is  only  more  early  that  revelation  gave  and  gives 
to  man  the  most  important  of  these  things.  To  Lessing 
the  movement  of  history  is  replete  with  design.  Lessing, 
a  keen  and  eminent  classicist,  held  that  polytheism  came 
out  of  monotheism.  God  gradually  trained  the  Jews  to 
the  idea  of  The  One. 

The  reflecting  scholar,  here  as  always,  was  in  great 
temptation  to  project  his  own  cogitation  into  things  and 
events,  and  Christianity  in  its  turn  for  him  was  mainly  a 
cogitative  process.  Indeed  !  —  God,  his  being  and  plan 
(§  22),  may  very  well  be  conceived  as  consistent  with  the 
mortality  and  annihilation  of  human  souls.  Common  un- 
derstanding was  bound  to  arrive  at  the  immortality  of 
the  Soul.  Lessing  conceives  God  as  a  being  of  which 
reason,  by  intrinsical  necessity,  must  have  a  true  concep- 
tion, a  necessity  utterly  declined  by  the  modern  zoological 
and  mechanical  philosophy,  and  by  its  occasional  corollary 
of  agnosticism.  All  religious  progress,  as  all  progress, 
is  a  refinement  of  reason  and  of  its  processes.  Christ 
inferred  truths.  Christianity  brought  nobler  motives  of 
right  conduct,  whereas  the  nobler  ones  among  the  Greeks 
and  Romans  had  been  moved  largely  by  the  desire  of 
posthumous  fame. 

The  New  Testament  (§  65)  is  a  book  which  has  occu- 
pied human  understanding  more  than  all  other  books. 

Lessing,  like  all  one-sided  intellectualists,  is  naive 
enough  to  believe  that  a  very  high  degree  of  clear  reasoning 
will  produce  purity  of  heart,  goodness  of  will  and  conduct, 
and  (in  §  85)  he  utters  a  dithyrambic  prophecy  of  a  ra- 
tionalistic millennium  when  motives  for  right  conduct  will 
cease  to  be  necessary.  All  this  is  the  philosophy  of  his 
"  Nathan,"  the  Cantica  Canticorum  of  Deism.  The  inci- 
sive and  earnest  words  of  Lessing  impress  one  vastly  more, 
to-day,  than  the  flighty  and  somewhat  sophomoric  enthusi- 
asm of  Herder's  naturalism  and  pantheism,  —  but  it  ap- 


6  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

pears  to  me  also  utterly  dogmatical  to  assume  that  Reason 
of  itself  points  to  great  intellectual  and  moral  truths  or 
even  goals,  and  furnishes,  so  to  speak,  not  only  chart  and 
magnet  for  the  soul's  navigation,  but  also  port  and  end  of 
voyage,  or  even  Isles  of  the  Blessed. 

The  great  metaphysician  of  Konigsberg,  Immanuel  Kant, 
in  1784  published  his  "Idee  zu  einer  allgemeinen  Ge- 
schichte  in  weltbiirgerlicher  Absicht,  "  a  cosmopolitan  phi- 
losophy of  History.  He  is  impressed  with  the  observation, 
that  but  a  poor  idea  of  wisdom  and  design  is  noticeable  in 
the  history  of  man.  But  perhaps  a  Kepler  or  Newton  for 
History  may  arise.  It  is  to  him  intensely  antipathetic  to 
conceive  that  bleak  and  sombre  thing,  accident,  as  taking 
the  place  of  the  standard  of  Reason.  Reason  does  not 
operate  instinctively:  perhaps  infinite  series  of  genera- 
tions are  required  for  the  perfection  of  the  race,  one  gen- 
eration transmitting  its  enlightenment  to  the  other.  He 
is  not  friendly  to  Rousseau's  state  of  nature  —  an  Arcadian 
shepherd's  life  of  mankind  would  permit  all  talents  to  re- 
main dormant:  men  would  not  be  much  more  than  sheep 
themselves.  From  a  fibre  as  twisted  and  gnarled  as  the 
wood  from  which  man  is  builded,  nothing  straight  can  be 
builded.  Kant  believes  in  a  theory  of  human  progress 
from  beast  condition  or  savagery  upward. 

History  is  generally  conceived  by  Kant  as  a  design  of 
nature  (Naturanstalf). 

A  more  decided  turn  towards  classical  antiquity  was 
taken  by  Wolfgang  Goethe,  the  master  of  German  expres- 
sion, wizard  of  letters,  and  himself  a  notable  exemplar  of 
a  kind  of  universal  culture.  Before  I  enter  this  theme,  I 
desire  to  say  that  I  am  entirely  emancipated  from  the 
charm  and  thraldom  of  my  youth,  which  period  of  life  is 
apt  to  lend  itself  to  the  witchery  of  that  great  writer's 
pen.  Here  it  is  well  to  hold  in  reserve  the  moral  judg- 
ment which  must  remain  sovereign  above  aesthetics  and 
the  genius  of  literary  perfection.  Thackeray's  critique  of 
Madame  Sand  may  here  be  fitly  cited:  "  We  may,  at  least, 
demand  in  all  persons  assuming  the  character  of  moralist 
or  philosopher,  order,  soberness,  and  regularity  of  life; 


CULTURE  AND  THE  HUMAN  SOUL  7 

for  we  are  apt  to  distrust  the  intellect  that  we  fancy  can 
be  swayed  by  circumstances  or  passion ;  and  we  know  how 
circumstances  or  passion  will  sway  the  intellect ;  how  mor- 
tified vanity  will  form  excuses  for  itself,  and  how  temper 
turns  angrily  upon  conscience  that  reproves  it." 

When  Goethe  in  the  latter  part  of  summer,  1786,  some- 
what suddenly  and  abruptly  decided  to  leave  Karlsbad  for 
Italy,  he  was  thirty-seven  years  of  age,  a  pupil  of  Rousseau 
in  his  belief  in  the  autonomy  of  human  sentiment,  passion, 
or  appetite,  and  a  pantheist  of  strong  conviction:  strongly 
attached,  also,  to  the  wife  of  another  man,  Charlotte  von 
Stein,  mother  of  seven  children,  and  forty-four  years  old: 
still,  I  say,  in  this  attachment,  though  the  sojourn  in  the 
South  in  great  measure  forced  his  mobile  and  susceptible 
soul  from  these  bonds.  For  Goethe  had  been  from  his 
youth  up  the  particular  object  of  women's  admiring  wor- 
ship, and  as  regards  them,  he  was  truly  weak  as  water. 

To  Frau  von  Stein  he  wrote,  Aug.  23,  1786,  "  and  then 
I  shall  live  in  the  free  world  with  thee  (mit  dir)  and  in 
happy  solitude,  without  name  or  station,  come  nearer  to 
the  earth  from  which  we  are  taken."  On  concubinage  in 
Germany  he  writes  (Oct.  25,  1786):  "Our  priests  are 
clever  people  who  pay  no  attention  to  such  trifles.  Of 
course,  if  we  were  to  request  their  approval,  they  would 
not  permit  it."  Goethe's  interest  in  classical  antiquity 
was  mainly  if  not  exclusively  directed  to  art:  he  drew 
and  designed  with  indefatigable  industry  and  it  took 
nearly  a  year  and  a  half  to  have  him  realize  that  all  these 
aspirations  were  futile  —  apart  from  this  he  was  convinced 
in  advance  that  the  freer  and  continual  contemplation  of 
works  of  art,  in  sculpture  and  painting,  as  well  as  of 
southern  landscape,  would  powerfully  and  fruitfully 
quicken  his  faculty  of  style  and  expression,  for  with  his 
wonderful  sense  of  literary  form,  there  was  coupled  amid 
all  the  rapt  habits  of  swift  production  a  practice  of  acute 
self-observation  and  psychological  analysis  of  his  own 
mental  processes  and  states  of  being,  and  much  practical 
shrewdness  in  converting  the  world  and  circumstances  to 
his  own  advantage,  interest,  and  comfort.  Of  classical 


8  TESTIMONIUM 

history,  Goethe  never  had  any  accurate  or  first-hand 
knowledge ;  the  stern  lessons  of  history  were  a  strange 
thing  to  this  sesthetical  and  literary  voluptuary,  and 
Greek  philosophy  as  all  metaphysics  he  in  the  main  ab- 
horred. We  may  therefore  fairly  define  him  as  an  archae- 
ological enthusiast,  indifferent  to  the  mere  erudition  of 
that  department,  keenly  attentive  to  the  elements  of  the 
beautiful  in  it  everywhere. 

He  desires  "to  learn  and  cultivate  himself  before  he 
reaches  forty."  He  gains  an  "unalloyed  sense  of  the 
value  of  an  object."  He  purchases  a  plaster  cast  of  the 
large  head  of  Zeus:  "it  stands  opposite  my  bed,  in  good 
light,  that  I  may  at  once  direct  my  morning  prayers  to 
it." 

On  Jan.  19,  1787,  of  the  recent  death  of  Frederic  the 
Great :  "  that  he  may  converse  with  the  heroes  of  his 
own  kind  in  the  lower  world."  In  Naples  he  met  Lady 
Hamilton,  whom  he  calls  "  the  masterpiece  of  the  great 
artist."  In  Sicily  he  utters  strong  disinclination  for  his- 
torical reminiscence :  no  Punic  wars  for  him :  he  prefers 
the  present :  beautiful  nature  and  the  gratification  of  his 
aesthetical  faculties.  Sicily  kindles  in  him  a  design  to 
reconstruct  with  these  forms  the  court  of  Alkinoos  and 
the  island  of  the  Phseacians,  and  his  Nausikaa  is  to  com- 
mit suicide  because  she  cannot  possess  Ulysses :  a  classic 
Werther  in  petticoats  indeed!  —  conceiving  himself  by 
the  bye  as  the  wandering  Ulysses  with  whom  all  fair 
women  fall  in  love.  He  feels  ecstasy  in  contemplating 
the  image  of  a  young  goddess  on  a  cameo.  Regrets  the 
absence  of  sculptured  forms  in  his  youthful  training.  He 
uses  Winckelmann  everywhere  for  a  guide.  He  does  not 
share  Herder's  dream  of  a  millennium  of  pure  humanity. 
He  removes  remorse  and  pain  from  his  soul  as  merely  dis- 
agreeable states  of  being. 

"  These  high  works  of  art  (of  classical  antiquity)  have 
at  the  same  time  been  produced  as  the  highest  works  of 
nature  by  men  in  accordance  with  true  and  natural  laws : 
whatever  is  arbitrary  and  fanciful  collapses:  there  is 
necessity,  there  is  God,"  i.e.  the  God  of  pantheism. 


CULTURE  AND  THE  HUMAN  SOUL  9 

"  Thus  I  live  happily  because  I  live  in  that  which  is  my 
Father's."  This  insolent  and  contemptuous  use  of  scrip- 
tural forms  is  quite  characteristic  of  Goethe,  who  was 
utterly  emancipated  from  Christianity.  Coupled  with 
his  ecstatic  pursuit  of  classic  art  is  the  incessant  interest 
in  concrete  science  from  which  he  was  swift  to  gather 
over  and  over  again  substructure  for  his  pantheism.  He 
was  absurdly  naive  in  his  belief  that  it  was  a  necessary 
and  intrinsically  simple  act  to  go  forward  from  any  exact 
study  of  any  branch  of  natural  science  to  his  own  view  of 
things,  to  pantheism :  and  his  allusions  to  Lavater,  Clau- 
dius, Jacobi,  who  believed  in  a  personal  God,  are  full  of 
bitterness  and  scorn. 

He  enjoys  Herder's  "  Ideas "  :  "  As  I  am  not  looking 
for  any  Messiah,  this  is  my  dearest  Gospel." 

In  a  few  significant  words  (of  Oct.  27,  1788)  he  lays 
down  his  own  axiom  of  living :  "  So  to  bear  oneself,  that 
one's  life,  as  far  as  it  is  dependent  on  oneself,  may  con- 
tain the  greatest  possible  amount  of  rational  happy 
moments."  Early  in  1788  he  penned  the  following,  also 
of  the  same  Epicurean  vein :  "  The  importance  of  each 
and  every  momentary  enjoyment  of  life,  often  appearing 
insignificant.  .  .  .  Now  I  see,  now  only  do  I  enjoy 
the  highest  that  has  remained  for  us  from  antiquity,  the 
statues."  March  15,  1788:  "In  Raphael's  villa,  where  in 
the  company  of  his  mistress  he  preferred  the  enjoyment 
of  life  to  all  art  and  to  all  fame.  It  is  a  sacred  monu- 
ment." As  not  believing  in  a  personal  God,  he  adopted 
at  this  time  the  phrase  of  "  higher  demons  "  when  he  de- 
sired to  express  something  like  "  providential,"  a  phrase 
which  recurs  much  in  the  conversations  of  his  old  age. 

How  poor  and  puny  after  all  was  this  aspect  and  this 
culture  of  Greek  statues  and  cameos,  this  determination 
of  ignoring  everything  that  did  not  touch  the  aesthetic 
chords  in  his  own  being  :  as  if  great  and  gifted  nations 
had  lived  their  life  on  earth,  had  struggled,  sinned,  es- 
tablished notable  institutions,  laid  the  foundations  of 
culture,  taste,  political  order,  kept  at  bay  the  despotism  of 
Asia,  had  essayed  all  the  problems  of  thought  and  being, 


10  TESTIMONIUM  ANIftLE 

had  lost  their  pagan  and  natural  mode  of  being  in  a  great 
religious  revolution  that  gave  a  new  moral  order  to  the 
western  world,  merely  to  the  end  that  the  human  form 
modelled  in  great  perfection  should  delight  a  few  choice 
spirits  of  the  same  western  world!  Absurd.  And  when 
Goethe  at  last  from  this  new  birth  of  his  culture  had  re- 
turned to  Weimar,  he  did  two  things:  he  began  to  study 
anatomy  and  he  installed  a  young  woman  of  the  humbler 
class  as  a  concubine  (Egmont  and  Klarchen,  over  again), 
and  wrote  his  Roman  Elegies:  in  his  culture  there  was 
no  place  for  any  divine  law. 

Goethe  has  written  a  novel,  "Wilhelm  Meister,"  in 
which  we  may  fully  believe  we  have  his  delineation  of 
much  of  himself  and  particularly  of  the  stages  of  growth 
in  the  development  of  his  own  culture. 

Few  books  so  strikingly  as  this  one  reveal  the  demoral- 
ization which  France  had  produced  in  Germany:  "to 
France,"  Goethe  himself  says,  "  we  owe  the  greatest  part 
of  our  culture."  Strolling  actors  and  actresses  and  loose 
living  :  highborn  men  and  women  —  almost  every  one  is 
morally  corrupt,  all,  however,  presented  in  graceful  colors 
as  of  one  who  was  at  one  with  this  society:  to  have  only 
one  paramour  constitutes  a  young  woman  "a  good  girl." 
There  are  few  other  elements  of  romance  in  this  novel  (if 
that  is  romance)  than  illicit  love  :  passages  which  are  in- 
terpolated with  pretty  essays  on  all  kinds  of  themes  :  on 
Shakespeare's  "  Hamlet "  ;  on  Corneille  and  Racine  ;  on 
art  collections  ;  on  stagecraft  and  the  drama  in  general ; 
essays  on  society  and  social  classes. 

All  the  women,  from  the  mere  child  Mignon  to  the 
Countess,  fall  in  love  with  Wilhelm,  who  is  morbidly  sus- 
ceptible towards  them  all :  his  literary  powers  raise  him 
to  easy  familiarity  with  the  wellborn  and  the  highborn. 

In  these  tangles  of  loose  living,  of  incessant  intrigue 
and  adultery,  one  fails  to  find  any  trace  of  absolute  or 
objective  moral  law.  It  is  really  a  pathological  mirror  of 
the  corruption  which  in  great  measure  was  swept  out  of 
Germany  by  the  stern  actualities  and  the  misery  which 
the  iron  broom  of  Napoleon's  legions  and  eagles  caused  to 


CULTURE  AND  THE  HUMAN  SOUL  11 

the  people  and  to  the  courts  and  courtlets  of  the  Holy 
Roman  Empire  of  the  German  nation. 

The  only  person  who  turns  towards  Christianity  is  the 
Count,  a  superstitious  fool  and  dotard,  and  the  fear  of 
death  is  his  main  motive.  The  morality  or  theory  of 
ethics  which  pervades  this  congeries  of  clever  essays, 
of  social  putrescence  and  a  few  noble  lyrics,  is  Rousseau- 
ism  :  we  need  heed  nothing  but  the  unalloyed  motive 
which  comes  from  our  human  impulse,  which  is  called 
heart,  or  nature,  or  some  other  fine  name  ;  it  is  sentimen- 
talism  running  rampant  and  uncontrolled.  There  is  no 
sin  but  only  folly  or  unwisdom.  Moral  remorse  is 
absurd  :  why  not,  when  there  is  no  objective  law  of 
righteousness  and  no  personal  God  who  is  going  to  judge 
the  quick  and  the  dead  ?  Principles  are  a  mere  supple- 
ment to  mode  of  living,  morality  a  mere  human  creation. 
"  O  how  unnecessary  is  the  severity  of  morals,  since 
nature  in  her  beautiful  manner  moulds  us  into  that  which 
we  are  to  be  !  " 

The  apotheosis  of  culture  and  the  implied  apotheosis 
of  self  cannot  be  carried  much  further.  What  utter  per- 
version have  we  here  of  the  transcendent  value  of  the 
human  soul  !  What  of  the  millions  of  plain  people  who 
cannot  attain  to  such  culture  ?  Are  they  mere  hewers  of 
wood  and  drawers  of  water,  to  till  the  lands  and  pay 
tithes  and  taxes  that  the  few  heroes  of  culture  may  strut 
as  peacocks  among  the  highborn  and  wellborn  ?  Or  is  the 
belief  in  a  righteousness  willed  by  the  God  of  Eternity  a 
mere  Hebraism  as  Matthew  Arnold,  a  later  high-priest  of 
culture,  would  have  us  believe  ?  —  We  pass  on  to  another 
noted  pantheist. 

Hegel  was  a  thinker  who  at  first  blush  —  in  his  philos- 
ophy of  history  —  had  much  to  say  of  spirit  and  of  culture. 
His  fanciful  theme  was  that,  e.g.  in  the  sequence  of  Greek 
political  history,  there  was  a  logical  necessity  in  the  un- 
folding of  things,  really  the  revelation  of  his  pantheistic 
"  God."  Of  course,  the  individual  soul  counts  for  nothing, 
the  millions  only  live  and  die  in  order  to  "  produce  " 
(whatever  that  may  be)  the  occasional  great  men  of  gen- 


12  TESTIMONIUM  ANI&LE 

erations  and  of  nations.  It  is  the  world  through  academic 
eyes  and  rearranged  in  academic  reflection.  The  "  world 
spirit "  manifests  itself  in  the  extraordinary  men,  and  when 
Napoleon  in  the  autumnal  days  of  1806  hurled  the  Prus- 
sian monarchy  to  the  ground,  Hegel  saw  in  the  great 
Corsican  the  incarnation  of  the  world  spirit.  The  ab- 
stractions which  the  reflecting  professor  of  metaphysics 
gained  out  of  his  cogitations  he  projects  into  the  practical 
measures  of  governmental  procedure  and  into  the  policy 
of  states  :  ideas  govern,  so  with  the  Spartans  the  "  idea  " 
of  civic  virtue  :  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  prevailed  in 
their  commonwealth  the  hard  practical  necessity  of  main- 
taining an  armed  camp  to  the  end  that  the  helots,  the 
ancient  owners  of  the  soil,  might  be  kept  in  serfdom  and 
subjection.  Why  did  Alexander  die  so  early  ?  Not  be- 
cause he  had  weakened  his  health  by  many  forms  of  ex- 
cesses, nor  because  malaria  had  been  superadded,  oh  no: 
"  it  was  rather  a  necessity  ;  in  order  that  he  might  stand 
as  the  youthful  hero  for  later  generations,  an  immature 
death  had  to  carry  him  off."  These  intrinsic  necessities 
abound  in  that  weird  and  fanciful  so-called  philosophy  of 
history  —  the  reductio  ad  absurdum  is  easy  enough  now, 
but  time  was  when  this  wisdom  was  reverently  treasured 
and  fed  to  academic  youth  from  the  professorial  chairs. 
But  this  Hegelian  creed  —  for  it  was  like  most  meta- 
physical systems,  but  vicariously  held  —  has  in  the  main 
receded  into  that  herbarium  or  museum  of  intellectual 
anatomy  called  history  of  philosophy.  —  Mommsen,  the 
vigorous  worshipper  of  Caesar,  still  remains  a  widely  read 
author.  I  have  noticed  in  his  popular  book,  "  History  of 
Rome,"  a  curious  revelation  of  the  Hegelian  spirit  in  deal- 
ing with  the  problem  of  spirit,  of  culture,  of  the  human 
soul.  "  It  is  more  than  an  error,"  Mommsen  says  (Book 
V,  Chap.  2)  ;  "  it  is  a  wanton  crime  against  the  Holy 
Ghost  potent  in  history,  if  one  considers  Gaul  solely  as 
the  training  or  drill  space  in  which  Csesar  trained  himself 
and  his  legions  for  the  impending  civil  war."  As  to  the 
semi-blasphemous  phrase  of  the  Hegelian,  we  wash  our 
hands  in  transcribing  it.  Why  then  did  the  myriads  of 


CULTURE,  AND  THE  HUMAN  SOUL  13 

free  Kelts  perish  ?  In  order  that  Germany  and  other 
commonwealths  should  base  their  culture  on  Classicism. 
Indeed!  And  is  it  not  rather  the  truth  that  but  a  handful 
of  the  cultured  ever  read  a  Greek  play  with  devotion  and 
vivid  sympathy :  and  what  an  infinite  blessing  has  it 
proved  that  to  a  limited  class  of  professional  teachers,  the 
"Antigone"  of  Sophocles  is  not  as  remote  and  faint  as 
the  literature  of  Sanscrit,  or  Persian  ? 

But  for  Mommsen  there  is  nothing  positive  or  absolutely 
true  or  precious  in  the  history  of  humanity.  All  indeed 
is  in  a  flux  :  "Even  the  loftiest  revelations  of  mankind" 
("Roman  History,"  Book  V,  Chap.  10)  "are  transitory;  the 
religion  once  true  may  become  a  lie  ;  the  political  system 
once  beneficent  may  become  a  curse."  What  then,  one 
may  say  with  Pilate,  what  is  truth? 

Culture  is  not  even  the  greatest  boon  of  human  kind, 
if  the  soul  were  perishable  and  mortal,  because  it  is  an 
economic  and  political  necessity  that  the  overwhelming 
majority  of  the  race  must  spend  life  and  strength  in  the 
support  of  life  and  social  order ;  and  it  is  as  absolutely  true 
as  an  axiom  of  mathematics  that  for  this  body  practical 
justice  and  peace  are  of  incomparably  greater  value  than 
culture. 

But  we  will  admit  that  when  the  immortality  of  the 
soul  be  abandoned,  when  even  the  belief  in  God  is  given 
up  and  Atheism  is  dignified  as  the  finality  in  the  forward 
and  upward  movement  of  the  human  mind  and  absolute 
truth  —  then  both  the  soul  and  culture  assume  a  different 
position,  are  subject  to  new  and  quite  different  valuations. 

Thus  Auguste  Comte,  who  carried  forward  the  mate- 
rialism of  the  French  Encyclopedists  and  spiced  his  theory 
of  Atheism  with  a  sociological  codification,  gives  a  new 
appreciation  of  all  these  things  and  of  the  great  concerns 
of  mankind.  He  holds  the  biological  theory  of  man,  who 
reaches  his  proper  perfection  when  he  puts  all  belief  and 
concern  about  God  away,  and  with  an  equally  radical 
elimination  of  metaphysics,  limits  all  his  higher  concerns 
to  assuming  a  practical  relation  to  natural  laws,  the 
irrefragable  and  final  truth  —  positivism.  History  is  dis- 


14  TESTIMONIUM 

solved  into  an  analysis  of  former  "  society "  and  its 
economics  and  its  anthropological  phenomena.  Comte,  with 
his  pretentious  dogmatism  of  the  three  stages  and  the  arti- 
ficial creation  of  an  absolutely  successive  routine  in  the 
movement  of  the  human  mind,  treats  history,  of  which  he 
had  but  a  general,  cyclopedic  knowledge,  with  a  naive 
brutality  and  dogmatic  conceit  rarely  observable  elsewhere 
in  the  history  of  speculation.  His  glib  generalizations  fit 
but  ill  many  parts  of  history,  for  every  phase  of  which  he 
had  the  moulds  of  his  categories  ready.  Why  one  should 
reason  or  argue  in  this  system,  at  all,  is  not  clear  :  when 
the  brain  functions  are  physical  phenomena  given  like  any 
other  and  operate  with  mechanical  definiteness.  His  vision 
of  history  was  clearly  modified  by  his  direct  environment 
and  by  the  Parisian  atmosphere  in  which  he  was  reared, 
e.g.  as  when  he  says  (ed.  Martineau,  Vol.  II,  p.  185) :  "  The 
political  influence  of  religious  doctrine  has  never  been 
great,"  —  whereas  the  spread  of  Christianity  in  the  Roman 
Empire,  the  dual  monarchy  of  pope  and  Roman  Empire  in 
the  Middle  Ages,  the  Crusades,  the  spread  of  the  Islam 
from  Delhi  to  Granada,  the  split  of  Europe  in  the  Refor- 
mation, utterly  turn  to  absurdity  that  shallow  apothegm. 
As  all  the  concerns  of  the  soul  in  the  positivist  creed 
are  with  this  world  of  sense  and  seeming  alone,  interest  in 
material  well-being  and  political  and  economic  things  dis- 
place the  spiritual  interests  :  —  "As  theological  hopes  of  a 
future  life  lose  their  power,  and  till  the  positive  philosophy 
establishes  itself  forever  by  exhibiting  the  connection  of  the 
individual  with  the  whole  human  race,  past,  present,  and 
future"  ($.,  p.  195),  really  Spencer's  "cell  "  in  the  social 
organism.  He  speaks  of  the  Greeks :  "  Their  cerebral 
energy,  finding  no  adequate  political  occupation."  He 
calls  Christianity  (p.  211),  "  This  revolution,  the  greatest 
the  world  has  ever  seen,  except  the  one  in  progress,"  i.e.  the 
adoption  of  Comte's  philosophy  as  the  finality  of  human 
attainment.  Quite  Hegelian  (although  utterly  mistaken) 
is  his  note  on  the  rise  of  Christianity,  —  "A  necessary 
(»£<?)  result  of  that  combination  of  Greek  and  Roman  in- 
fluence, at  the  period  of  their  interpenetration.  .  .  ." 


CULTURE  AND  THE  HUMAN  SOUL  15 

In  the  course  of  his  life,  Comte  was  more  and  more 
filled  with  a  missionary  fervor,  which  is  revealed  in  his 
"  Positivist  Catechism  ":  he  is  the  founder  of  a  new  "reli- 
gion," in  which  humanity  takes  the  place  of  God :  prayer  to 
the  dead  heroes  of  humanity  is  inculcated  as  a  daily  duty 
of  the  new  cult :  the  new  Trinity  consists  of  Space,  Earth, 
Humanity ;  scientific  men  are  to  be  priests.  There  is 
then  a  Faith  of  Positivism  (Foi  Positive)  limited  to  the 
interest  in  the  mechanism  of  phenomena,  utterly  banishing 
concern  as  to  the  causes  and  ends  of  things.  Draper  and 
Buckle  were  his  disciples  in  their  attempt  to  bring  the 
new  insight  to  bear  in  the  domain  of  human  history,  — 
"for,"  he  claims,  "the  phenomena  of  intelligence  and 
sociability  are  also  subject  to  invariable  laws  which 
permit  a  systematic  prevision  of  recurrent  phenomena,  the 
only  characteristic  aim  of  true  science."  The  submission 
to  fundamental  law  is  the  positive  dogma.  Of  the  new 
religion  of  Humanity,  Love  is  the  principle,  Order  the 
basis,  and  Progress  the  aim.  He  charges  Christianity 
with  a  fundamental  egoism  because  it  holds  that  we  are 
guests  and  strangers  in  this  world.  The  altruism  of  Comte 
is  stolen  from  the  universal  charity  in  the  divine  obligation 
of  Christian  ethics  —  this  altruism  is  a  spook  and  an  in- 
truder which  endeavors  with  much  academic  prattle  and 
fuzziness  of  technical  nomenclature  to  occupy  the  throne 
on  which  Christ  has  placed  the  Love  of  Mankind.  There 
is  in  this  final  society  the  moral  providence  of  women,  the 
intellectual  providence  of  the  priest  of  the  new  religion,  i.e. 
the  man  of  science,  and  the  material  providence  of  the  patri- 
cians as  a  body :  the  new  religion  is  sociocratic,  not  theo- 
cratic, whereas  theological  religion  is  essentially  egoistical 
and  individualistic.  The  two  things  which  this  sociological 
atheist  most  detests  are  "  theologism  "  and  "  war."  One 
thinks  of  the  Horatian  phrase  that  some  things  are  so 
ingrained  in  man  that  they  will  ever  return :  even  here, 
reasoning  without  reason  and  establishing  a  religion  with 
saints,  with  a  calendar,  with  a  service  and  a  Supreme 
Being,  though  without  God  and  without  an  immortal 
soul  —  one  of  the  undulations  that  came  out  of  Paris  — 


16  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

not  alone  the  Paris  of  Diderot  and  Helvetius,  but  also  the 
Paris  of  Robespierre  and  of  St.  Simon. 

Rarely  has  human  thought  attained  a  greater  abase- 
ment of  the  human  soul  and  a  more  brutal  divestment  of 
that  spirituality  which  constitutes  at  once  its  dignity  and 
its  essence,  to  rob  it  of  hope  and  reduce  it  to  a  sum  of 
cerebral  irritations.  Though  all  this  lore  is  at  bottom 
not  so  very  novel:  let  us  hear  Berkeley,  who  wrote  of 
some  foes  of  Christianity  in  his  day,  in  the  England  of 
1732  (Alciphron,  Dialogue  2) :  "  with  an  air  that  would 
make  one  think  atheism  established  by  law,  and  religion 
only  tolerated.  ..."  Indeed  in  the  Comtian  order  the 
soul  of  man  really  disappears,  and  we  have  (to  use  again 
an  expression  of  Berkeley's)  "  a  beast,  without  reflection 
or  remorse,  without  foresight  or  appetite  of  immortality, 
without  notion  of  vice  or  virtue,  or  order,  or  reason,  or 
knowledge."  No,  true  culture  can  hardly  stand  with 
materialism  and  mechanism,  the  dignity  of  the  soul  as 
well  of  all  human  personality  is  closely  bound  up  with 
its  immortality  and  with  its  specific  and  separate  dignity 
in  each  human  being. 

This  dignity  of  the  immortal  soul,  then,  is  the  central 
point  of  our  own  contention,  and  this  also,  that  no  matter 
how  profoundly  it  is  connected  with  this  transient  body 
in  marvellous  interdependence,  still  it  in  itself  is  immate- 
rial. "  For,"  to  use  the  words  of  Blaise  Pascal,  "  it  is  im- 
possible that  that  part  of  our  being  which  thinks  within 
us  should  be  other  than  spiritual,  and  if  one  were  to 
affirm  that  we  are  but  corporeal,  this  probably  would  even 
more  exclude  us  from  the  comprehension  of  things,  inas- 
much as  there  is  nothing  as  incomprehensible  as  to  say 
that  matter  understood  itself."  And  it  is  in  this  impor- 
tant and  grave  relation  of  things,  I  believe,  that  Pascal 
elsewhere  in  the  earlier  part  of  his  "  Pensees  "  utters  the 
remark  that  man  has  really  no  relation  at  all  to  (that 
mystery  of  material  recurrent  phenomena  which  we  call) 
nature.  "  We  shall  never,"  says  Lotze  ("  Metaphysics, 
III,  239),  "succeed  in  analytically  deducing  the  feeling  from 
the  nature  of  its  physical  excitant";  and  (z'6.,  §  248): 


17 

"  We  shall  never  see  the  last  atom  of  the  nerve  imping- 
ing upon  the  soul,  or  the  soul  upon  it  .  .  ."  and  ($., 
249)  "  We  do  not  look  for  man's  personality  in  body  an 
soul  alike,  but  in  the  soul  alone." 


Rarely,  I  believe,  in  the  academic  controversies  of  the 
nineteenth  century  have  these  matters  been  discussed 
with  more  vigor  than  by  the  noted  historian,  Johann 
Gustav  Droysen,  in  his  critique  of  Buckle's  injection  of 
physicalism  into  history  and  historiography.  This  was 
essentially  making  a  mechanism  of  even  operation  out  of 
human  consciousness,  and  decrying  the  moral  principle 
and  the  freedom  of  the  will.  Droysen  finds  himself  called 
upon  to  define  civilization  and  to  give  the  delimitation  of 
culture  from  it.  "  That,  which  in  history,  Times  and 
Nations  have  elaborated  or  achieved  for  mankind,  —  to 
have  worked  through  it  in  spirit,  with  thinking,  as  a 
continuity  and  lived  through  it  —  this  we  call  culture 
(Bildung^).  Civilization  is  contented  with  the  results  of 
culture  ;  civilization  is  poor  in  the  abundance  of  wealth, 
blasee  in  the  opulence  of  enjoyment.  And  what  'prog- 
ress' is  that  where  perhaps  there  is  some  advancement 
of  intellectual  truths  coupled  with  a  weakening  of  moral 
truths!  In  the  history  of  nations,  there  are  at  work 
moral  forces  and  ideas.  Duty,  virtue,  choice  of  action, 
are  there  at  work.  Mind,  conscience,  will,  are  the  great 
elements  in  history:  or  are  men  merely  mental  automata? 
Nature  study  indeed  is  never  concerned  about  individuals 
but  about  types  alone.  History  is  the  jv&dt  <ravrdv  of 
mankind,  the  conscience  of  mankind." 


I  have  said  so  much  of  the  problems  of  culture  and  the 
human  soul  because  I  now  wish  briefly  to  add  the  Chris- 
tian position,  which  for  the  writer  is  absolute,  because  it 
is  that  of  Christ. 

The  soul  of  man  is  the  precious  thing  in  that  valuation: 
it  is  that  which  is  the  object  of  this  concern:  the  turning 


18  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

of  it  back  to  God.  The  little  children,  the  poor,  the  un- 
cultured, are  no  less  precious  in  His  sight,  because  they 
are  endowed  no  less  with  immortal  souls.  How  pro- 
found, how  incisive  his  spiritual  righteousness,  the  inner 
attitude  of  the  soul,  not  the  satisfaction  of  outward  stat- 
utes (Matthew  5,  20;  15,  2;  Mark  2,  27;  7,  2-15).  The 
Summum  bonum  is  not  indeed  this  life,  but  the  life  be- 
yond this  life  (Matthew  5,  25  sq. ;  6, 20;  7,  23;  8, 12,  etc.). 
Christ  and  Christians  must  dispense  with  the  approval  of 
the  Neopagan  Nietzsche,  who  has  called  the  Gospel  a 
system  of  Ethics  for  slaves.  As  if  a  little  eloquence  or 
some  lyrical  faculty  or  keener  analytical  power,  or  per- 
haps a  symmetrical  countenance,  or  some  other  possession 
or  acquisition  raised  the  possessor  above  these  soul-needs 
or  soul-truths,  or  as  if  such  exceptional  particular  quali- 
ties or  possessions  really  satisfied  the  soul,  where  genuine 
honesty  and  veracity  prevails,  —  or  as  if  a  novel  or  clever 
rearrangement  of  the  lapilli  that  constitute  the  assets  of 
human  consciousness  and  human  history  —  as  if  this  could 
do  more  than  make  a  new  pattern  in  the  mosaic  of  the 
ages. 

Christianity  is  not  the  sum  of  an  evolution  of  human 
speculation,  it  is  not  the  goal  of  any  purely  human  move- 
ment, although  it  has  suffered  sorely  at  the  hands  of  those 
who  wished  to  justify  it  academically,  for  ever  it  has  been, 
and  is,  and  will  be,  "unto  the  Greeks,  foolishness."  It 
seems  utterly  wrong,  to  me,  to  separate  the  progress  of 
understanding  and  of  art,  letters,  and  material  civiliza- 
tion from  the  moral  decadence  and  decay  of  the  Classical 
World  as  summarily  delineated  by  Paul  (Romans  1). 
Even  where  no  higher  standard  of  ethics  prevails  than 
a  utilitarian,  it  would  seem  wrong  to  dissever  the  one 
from  the  other. 

Paulsen,  a  voluble  and  voluminous  writer,  has  said 
some  apt  and  not  at  all  shallow  things  about  Christianity 
coming  into  the  world  not  by  any  means  as  a  product  of 
evolution,  but  as  the  hard  fact  of  the  greatest  revolution 
the  history  of  mankind  has  known  ("  Gresch.  der  EtTiik  "). 
He  writes  felicitously  of  the  essential  difference  between 


CULTURE  AND  THE  HUMAN  SOUL  19 

Christianity  and  Greek  humanity,  but  his  first-hand 
knowledge  of  classical  antiquity  is  by  no  means  in  con- 
formity with  the  sweeping  abstractions  and  universal 
theses  so  dear  to  the  pen  and  voice  of  academic  men  :  his 
vision  of  the  classic  world  is  not  close  and  clear  enough, 
though  of  distant  landscapes  mere  sketches  are  often  most 
useful  to  those  who  have  no  access  of  their  own  nor  closer 
vision.  I  propose,  later  on,  to  furnish  data  that  will  war- 
rant a  fair  induction  in  the  formation  of  judgment. 


As  to  culture  and  the  human  soul,  it  remains  for  me  to 
pen  a  few  pertinent  matters  before  closing  this  chapter. 

I  radically  dissent  from  much  of  the  loose  generalization 
of  current  unbelief,  which,  while  removing  a  personal  God 
and  his  design  from  this  world  (of  which  we  really  know 
but  a  very  little),  talk  glibly  of  a  systematic  progress  in 
which  culture  is  accumulated  for  future  generations. 
Thus  then  we  are  to  believe  that  man,  and  the  souls  of 
individual  men,  are  as  nothing  in  themselves  but  gain 
value  merely  as  elements  in  a  totality  comprehended  and 
enjoyed  by  what  happens  to  be  at  the  given  moment,  the 
last  or  most  modern  generation.  What  legislation  then 
establishes  this  new  kind  of  design?  Who  brings  this 
purpose  into  human  history  ?  A  full  generation  have  I 
striven  to  gain  a  closer  vision  of  the  classical  world,  and 
I  have  seen  there  a  movement,  which,  taken  as  a  whole, 
was  one  of  decline  and  decay,  even  in  a  cultural  aspect. 

It  is  entirely  possible  for  academic  arbitrariness  or  any 
other  whim  to  make  out  a  fictitious  unit  of  successive  hu- 
manity when  the  actuality  are  individual  persons,  and 
souls.  "  Humanity,"  says  Lotze  ("  Outlines  of  the  Phi- 
losophy of  Religion,"  1882,  Leipzig,  §81),  "for  certain  re- 
quirements of  morality  may  be  fictitiously  assumed  as 
something  actual  in  this  universality.  But  specific, 
living  reality  it  does,  in  fact,  possess  only  as  the  plu- 
rality of  generations  that  succeed  each  other  ;  and  an 
'  education '  is  incomprehensible  which  constantly  changes 
its  material,  throws  away  those  who  are  incompletely 


20  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

educated,  and  accumulates  the  fruits  of  education  upon 
later  generations  without  the  deserts  of  the  latter,  and 
without  having  the  previous  generations,  which  have 
shared  in  the  production,  receive  any  share  in  the  enjoy- 
ment of  these  fruits." 

There  is  little  space  in  this  chapter  and  little  inclination 
in  the  writer  to  turn  aside  to  Matthew  Arnold's  "  Culture 
and  Anarchy,"  essentially  a  polemic  of  the  passing  hour 
and  permeated  by  a  flippant  spirit  and  pretty  shallow  wit, 

—  controversial  papers  which  have  given  to  Swift's  phrase 
of  "  Sweetness  and  Light "  a  new  currency.      His  main 
thesis  is  that  the  British  Philistine  (a  phrase  borrowed 
from  the  German)  was  too  much  devoted  to  "  Hebraism," 
the  righteousness  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  that  he,  the 
Philistine,  should  turn    more  to  "Hellenism,"  i.e.  "the 
habit  of  fixing  our  minds  upon  the  intelligible  law  of 
things,"  or  "  the  letting  of  our  consciousness  play  freely 
and  simply  upon  the  facts  before  us." 

Arnold  has  evidently  pondered  much  on  culture,  and  he 
has  coined  terms  which  he  jingles  much  and  with  the  air 
of  a  very  confident  trader.  "  Culture  and  Totality  "  are 
man's  one  thing  needful.  Culture  he  also  defines  as  the 
harmonious  perfection  of  our  whole  being  :  whereas 
Goethe,  for  whom  Matthew  Arnold  has  some  affinity, 
certainly  excluded,  or  subordinated,  morality  to  culture. 
And  righteousness  is  greater  than  taste,  is  it  not  ?  "  Cul- 
ture," then,  for  Arnold  is  the  court  of  last  appeal,  which, 
e.g.,  determines  what  is  essential  in  any  given  religion 

—  culture,  personified  in  what   man   or  men  ?     In   that 
loose  and  light  fencing,  this  modern  pupil  of  the  Deists, 
with  infinite  ease,  couples  and  really  identifies  reason  and 
the  will  of  God  :  one  thinks  of  Lessing  or  Shaftesbury. 
Elsewhere  he  calls  culture   "  a  harmonious  expansion  of 
all  the  powers  which  make  the  beauty  and  worth  of  hu- 
man nature.  ..."     Again  he  presents  culture  as  a  study 
of  perfection.     He  credits  the  Greeks  (the  old  glib  and 
convenient  generalization)   with  "the  immense  spiritual 
significance  .  .   .  due  to  their  having  been  inspired  with 
this  central  and  happy  idea  of  the  essential  character  of 


CULTURE  AND  THE  HUMAN  SOUL  21 

human  perfection  "  —  a  quality  largely  injected  into  "  the 
Greeks"  by  Matthew  Arnold  himself.  Also,  Arnold 
speaks  with  enthusiastic  reverence  of  Herder  and  Lessing. 
We  get  at  the  root  of  the  matter  when  Arnold,  at  last, 
reaches  the  greatest  and  gravest  theme  of  the  experience 
of  mankind,  Sin  (p.  117),  and  here  we  cannot  consider 
him  otherwise  than  as  a  man  with  little  historical  sense, 
and  very  shallow  moral  sense,  when  he  marvels  that  there 
is  so  little  of  sin  in  Plato  and  so  much  in  St.  Paul ;  the 
mere  ease  in  itself  with  which  Arnold  chooses  to  make 
such  crude  juxtaposition  at  all  is  odd.  He  is  one  who 
looks  out  upon  the  world  across  a  library  table,  and  who, 
of  himself,  believes  that  all  recorded  utterance  is  merely 
letters  and  equally  food  for  the  critic.  The  present 
writer  utterly  declines  to  assent  to  the  following  defini- 
tion of  Christianity  (p.  120)  :  "Those  beneficent 
forces  which  have  so  borne  forward  humanity  in  its 
appointed  work  of  coming  to  the  knowledge  and  posses- 
sion of  itself.  ..."  As  if  Christianity  fairly  considered 
were  not  something  for  which  humanity  owes  absolutely 
no  thanks  whatever  to  itself,  and  which  in  its  very  founda- 
tions contradicts,  denies,  antagonizes  the  pride  and  strength 
of  mere  humanity. 


The  concerns  of  the  Human  Soul,  we  hold,  are  universal 
and  (unless  we  descend  to  the  conception  of  mere  myriads 
of  zoological  units,  perishable  as  to  body  and  soul)  are 
indissolubly  wrapt  up  with  the  hope  of  immortal  life  and 
of  a  divine  law  of  conduct  for  this  being,  here,  and  now. 
Compared  with  this  vast  periphery  of  interest  and  tran- 
scendent concern,  the  interests  of  culture  must  of  neces- 
sity deal  with  a  small  number  who  actually  have 
in  the  main,  very  many  of  them,  overvalued  them- 
selves and  their  exceptional  endowments,  and  have  con- 
tributed little,  very  little,  to  the  real,  that  is  the  universal, 
postulates  of  the  human  soul.  Does  the  professional 
study  of  the  classical  world  at  all  affect  or  determine  the 
spiritual  interests  of  the  student  ?  I  am  not  prepared  to 


22  TESTIMONIUM 

speak  for  others.  It  cannot  be  denied,  however,  that  the 
attitude  of  the  given  man  to  Christianity  or  the  absence 
of  a  definite  attitude  will  certainly  color  the  vision  of  men. 
How  different  the  conception  of  a  Luther  and  of  an  Eras- 
mus, of  a  Milton  and  of  a  Shaftesbury,  of  a  Thirl  wall  and 
of  a  Byron,  of  a  Gladstone  and  of  a  Swinburne. 

We  close  this  chapter  with  a  few  citations  :  two  from 
Goethe,  whom  the  Germans  are  wont  to  revere  as  the  in- 
carnation of  culture,  the  other  from  John  Ruskin,  who,  in 
the  English-speaking  world,  has  furthered  interest  in  the 
Beautiful  more  than  any  other  man  of  letters.  Goethe, 
at  the  age  of  sixty-four,  wrote  to  Jacobi  (Jan.  6,  1813)  as 
follows:  "  I  for  myself,  considering  the  multiform  tenden- 
cies of  my  own  nature,  cannot  satisfy  myself  with  a 
single  way  of  thinking.  As  poet  and  artist,  I  am  a  poly- 
theist,  as  a  student  of  nature,  I  am  a  pantheist,  and  the 
one  as  decidedly  as  the  other.  If  I  need  a  God  for  my 
personality  as  that  of  a  moral  human  being,  that  is  pro- 
vided for.  The  affairs  of  heaven  and  earth  are  so  exten- 
sive a  realm,  that  the  organs  of  all  beings  alone,  united, 
can  comprehend  it." 

His  culture-pride  is  also  well  expressed  in  these  lines: 

"  Wer  Wissenschaf  t  und  Kunst  besitzt 

Der  hat  Religion ; 
Wer  jene  beiden  nicht  besitzt, 
Der  habe  Religion." 

—  "Zahme  Xenien,"  VI,  publ.  in  1836. 

On  the  other  hand,  Ruskin,  in  his  old  age  ("  Praeterita" : 
The  Campo  Santo),  wrote  thus:  "  One  must  first  say  a 
firm  word  concerning  Christianity  itself.  I  find  numbers, 
even  of  the  most  intelligent  and  amiable  people,  not 
knowing  what  the  word  means;  because  they  are  always 
asking  how  much  is  true,  and  how  much  they  like,  and 
never  ask,  first,  what  was  the  total  meaning  of  it,  whether 
they  like  it  or  not. 

"The  total  meaning  was,  and  is,  that  the  God,  who  made 
earth  and  its  creatures,  took  at  a  certain  time  upon 
the  earth,  the  flesh  and  form  of  man  ;  in  that  flesh  sus- 


CULTURE  AND  THE  HUMAN  SOUL  23 

tained  the  pain  and  died  the  creature  he  had  made;  rose 
again  after  death  unto  glorious  human  life,  and  when  the 
date  of  human  race  is  ended,  will  return  in  visible  human 
form,  and  render  to  every  man  according  to  his  work. 
Christianity  is  the  belief  in,  and  the  love  of,  God  thus 
manifested.  Anything  less  than  this,  the  mere  acceptance 
of  the  sayings  of  Christ,  or  assertion  of  any  less  than 
divine  power  in  His  Being,  may  be,  for  aught  I  know, 
enough  for  virtue,  peace,  and  safety;  but  they  do  not 
make  people  Christians,  or  enable  them  to  understand  the 
heart  of  the  simplest  believer  in  the  old  doctrine." 


CHAPTER  II 

HUMANISM  AND  THE  HUMANISTS 

IT  is  almost  six  hundred  years  since  Petrarch  gave 
himself  up  to  the  joy  and  study  of  his  own  classicism. 
The  movement  which  he  led  was  away  from  the  dictation 
and  control  of  the  mediaeval  church  and  from  its  literary 
forms  and  from  its  culture.  This  movement  is  often 
called  Humanism  :  the  German  writers  Voigt  and  Burck- 
hardt,  the  English  aesthetician  Symonds,  and  others  have 
unfolded  this  powerful  movement  in  the  higher  pursuits 
of  men  quite  fully.  The  sanest  of  the  three  scholars  I 
have  named  is  Voigt.  The  base  and  hope  of  each  of  the 
three  is  the  force  that  determines  and  guides  the  limner's 
hand,  that  furnishes  shade  and  color  in  their  painting. 
Symonds  is  often  curiously  ecstatic — as  when  he  speaks 
of  the  "  new-found,  Holy  Land  of  Culture,"  of  the  "  inde- 
structible religion  of  science  and  the  reason,"  this  "  search 
after  the  faith  of  culture,"  and  other  phrases  morbidly 
exaggerated,  wide  of  the  truth.  And  the  same  writer 
says  very  justly :  "  Yet  we,  no  less  weary  of  erudition  than 
Faust  was  " —  or  again :  "  Disenchanted  and  disillusioned 
as  we  are  by  those  four  centuries  of  learning,  the  musical 
lament  of  Dido  and  the  stately  periods  of  Latin  prose 
are  little  better,  considered  as  spiritual  sustenance,  to  us, 
than  the  husks  that  the  swine  did  eat."  We  hear  the 
same  soul,  uttering  itself  —  accordingly  as  the  intellect 
and  aesthetic  sense,  or  the  immortal  spirit,  predominates. 


My  own  study  aims  at  this:  I  desire  to  show,  fairly, 
how  conduct  and  spiritual  interests  kept  company,  and 
what  company,  with  the  new  movement  of  culture  domi- 

24 


HUMANISM  AND  THE  HUMANISTS  25 

nating  and  precious  for  its  own  sake.  In  this  quest  1 
have  striven  to  gain  a  closer  vision  of  things  and  minds  : 
I  am  not  content  to  merely  transcribe  from  the  pages  of 
Symonds  or  of  the  two  Germans.  Symonds  indeed  has 
fully  seen  and  felt  the  moral  and  spiritual  reverse  side  of 
this  bright  coin :  he  has  seen  there  "  the  conflict  of  medi- 
asval  tradition  with  revived  paganism;" — "it  led  to 
recklessness  and  worldly  vices,  rather  than  to  reformed 
religion."  He  speaks  of  "ascetic  piety  and  pagan  sensu 
ality ;  "  —  "  it  was  the  universal  object  of  the  humanists 
to  gain  a  consciousness  of  self,  distinguished  from  the 
vulgar  herd;"  —  "the  standard  whereby  the  Italians 
judged  this  '  virtue '  was  sesthetical  rather  than  moral ;  " 
— "  only  at  rare  intervals,  and  in  rare  natures  of  the 
type  of  Michel  Angelo,  did  the  Christian  ideal  resume  its 
sway." 

As  for  the  great  exile  of  Florence,  Dante  Alighieri,  he 
is  indeed  not  so  permeated  with  the  spirit  of  the  Middle 
Ages  as  many  would  have  it :  he  clearly  stands  on  the 
threshold  of  new  things.  His  high  valuation  of  what  he 
knew  of  classics  and  the  classical  world,  pointed  the  way : 
it  must  have  been  in  the  air :  for  the  human  soul  will  not 
be  permanently  a  mere  funnel  and  conduit  pipe  for  the 
tenets  and  paragraphs  of  bygone  ages  and  generations. 
Aristotle,  who  furnished  to  Scholasticism  logic  and  cate- 
gories, was  revered  by  Dante.  As  he  idealized  everything 
written  in  classic  Latin,  so  did  all  the  further  spirits  of 
Humanism  to  Erasmus,  to  Montaigne  and  far  beyond. 
And  this  attitude  of  idealization  is  both  the  strength  and 
the  weakness  of  the  entire  movement.  And  so  it  is  even 
now.  But  why  should  the  Tiber  be  more  "  classical "  or 
associated  with  loftier  or  finer  ideas  and  reminiscences, 
than  the  Thames  ?  Or  why  should  Helicon,  Kastalia,  or 
the  Ilissos  be  more  precious  than  the  Charles  River  at 
Boston,  Lucian  more  classic  than  Voltaire,  Horace  more 
than  Addison  or  Chesterfield,  Philopoimen  or  Aratos 
more  so  than  George  Washington,  Lysander  more  so  than 
Nelson  or  Blake  ?  And  even  the  very  guide  of  Dante's 
Inferno,  Vergil,  has  been,  by  common  consent,  reduced  to 


26  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

a  much  lower  position  as  an  Epic  poet  than  Dante  him- 
self. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  canonicity  of  Vergil  as  "  the 
poet"  came  to  Dante  through  an  unbroken  tradition  of 
the  Roman  grammatici  from  Quintilian  onward.  And  as 
Vergil  was  idealized  by  the  genius  so  vastly  superior,  thus 
too  did  the  Ghibelline  Exile  idealize  Julius  Caesar,  one  of 
the  most  consummate  self-seekers  among  the  practical  poli- 
ticians of  all  time,  because  the  victor  of  Pharsalos  and 
Thapsus  was,  to  Dante,  the  incarnation  and  type  of  Mon- 
archy and  the  Emperor.  Dante  knew  not  that  he  himself 
was,  or  was  to  prove  to  be,  the  very  Homer  and  more  of 
the  Tuscan  tongue,  the  "  vulgar "  tongue,  in  comparison 
with  Latin,  of  which  in  the  "  Convito,"  I,  5,  he  says : 
"  in  nobility,  because  the  Latin  is  perpetual  and  incorrupt- 
ible ;  the  language  of  the  vulgar  is  unstable  and  corrupt- 
ible. Hence  we  see  in  the  ancient  writings  of  the  Latin 
Comedies  and  Tragedies  that  they  cannot  change,  being 
the  same  Latin  that  we  now  have ;  this  happens  not  with 
our  native  tongue,  which  being  home-made,  changes  at 
pleasure." 


Dante's  Greek  lore  is  a  faint  and  distant  thing,  through 
reflection  from  Latin  letters ;  suspended  in  Limbo  though 
these  Greeks  were,  still  were  they  possessors  "  of  great 
names,"  "  souls  of  mighty  worth. " 

Dante,  too,  cherished  it  as  a  dear  and  noble  conception 
that  the  Italians  were,  after  all,  heirs  and  descendants  of 
the  race  that  once  held  universal  sway,  were  in  fact  Latin 
(J)e  Vulgari  Eloquentia). 


Pain  and  disgust  with  the  present  had  much  to  do  with 
the  new  movement.  Villani  (who  died  at  Florence  of  the 
great  plague,  1348)  visited  Rome  in  1300  under  the  spe- 
cial indulgence  proclaimed  by  Boniface  VIII.  Among  the 
thoughts  there  suggested  and  set  free  was  this  one:  "  and, 
seeing  the  great  and  ancient  objects  of  it  (viz.,  of  Rome} 


HUMANISM  AND  THE  HUMANISTS  27 

and  reading  the  stories  and  great  deeds  of  the  Romans, 
written  by  Vergil  and  by  Sallust  and  Lucan,  and  Titus 
Livius  and  Valerius  and  Paulus  Orosius  and  other  masters 
of  history,  who  described  both  the  little  things  and  the 
great  things,  also  of  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  whole  world; 
to  give  record  and  examples  to  those  who  are  to  come  close  to 
their  style  and  form,  but,  considering  our  city  of  Florence, 
daughter  and  product  (fattura)  of  the  Romans"  etc.  In 
Petrarch,  bel  esprit  of  Europe's  fourteenth  century,  the 
newly  discovered  elements  of  beauty  and  strength  of  Clas- 
sic Latinism  found  a  soil  curiously  fitted  and  predisposed 
through  aims  and  ideals.  Not  only  did  he  "study"  the 
literce  humaniores — whether  he  himself  coined  the  phrase 
or  not,  I  have  not  been  able  to  determine  —  but  he  led  the 
way  in  the  dash  of  immersion,  appropriation,  imitation. 
For  the  aim  was  now  to  think  the  thoughts,  to  be  con- 
cerned in  the  concerns,  to  write  the  style,  of  Vergil,  of  Cic- 
ero, of  Seneca ;  to  endow  them,  in  a  word,  with  a  practical 
and  absolute  authority,  at  which  their  own  contemporaries 
would  have  marvelled,  at  which  they  themselves  perhaps 
would  have  smiled.  His  time  became  enamoured  of  him: 
his  letters  were  eagerly  copied  for  their  Latin  style:  it 
became  the  most  notable  achievement  of  power  and  taste  to 
write  in  this  fashion.  "  Virtue  and  Glory  "  are  a  prominent 
feature  in  these  letters,  particularly  glory :  it  was  his  delight 
to  dub  his  friends  Lselius,  Simonides,  and  the  like.  It  is 
tedious  to  us  to  wade  through  his  pages  dripping  with 
classic  allusion  and  ornament.  The  reminiscence  of  the 
Ciceronian  phrase  fails  to  flash  upon  us  as  a  superhuman 
achievement:  his  treasures  have  largely  turned  to  ashes. 
His  pages  curiously  reveal  the  struggle  between  Christian 
morality  and  pagan  worship  of  glory  and  of  the  things  of 
this  world.  His  poems  to  the  eyes  of  Madonna  Laura 
were  based  on  what  Symonds  calls  a  respectable  friend- 
ship: though  they  have  given  to  the  world  of  letters  the 
sonnet.  Knight  or  Prelate  was  still  the  choice  of  gifted 
men  in  that  age :  Petrarch  had  to  live  and  mainly  lived  from 
the  favors  and  prebends  of  great  prelates.  His  two  ille- 
gitimate children,  Giovanni  (1337)  and  Francesca  (1343), 


28  TESTIMONIUM  ANUVLE 

were  subsequently  legitimized  by  papal  bulls.  The  great- 
est labor  of  his  life  was  devoted  to  an  epic  in  heroic  verse 
in  the  Vergilian  manner,  devoted  not  indeed  to  the  glori- 
fication of  Pope  or  Emperor,  but  to  the  memory  of  achieve- 
ments of  the  elder  Scipio.  He  called  it  Africa  and  he  was 
duly  crowned  on  the  Capitoline  Hill  at  Rome,  in  April, 
1341,  receiving  the  Laurel  from  the  hand  of  a  Roman  Sen- 
ator. In  our  own  day,  Oxford  and  Cambridge  are  well- 
nigh  the  only  places  left  in  all  the  Renaissance  movement, 
where  high  academic  prizes  are  awarded  to  this  form  of 
culture  —  the  elevation  of  the  Exotic  —  once  dominating 
the  intellectual  ambition  of  Europe.  Like  Aristippos  of 
Kyrene,  he  knew  how  to  use  without  much  being  used,  to 
hold  and  not  be  held,  to  receive  ample  donations  and  still 
maintain  a  high  degree  of  personal  independence  and  free- 
dom of  movement.  The  ancient  man  belonged  to  his 
state,  the  mediaeval  man  belonged  to  church  and  feudal 
overlord  —  this  graceful  stylist,  often  called  the  first  of 
modern  minds,  belonged,  in  the  main,  to  himself  alone. 

His  letters  are  often  very  charming:  the  purity  and 
psychological  truth  with  which  he  reveals  and  delineates 
sentiment,  reflection,  emotion,  would  still  entertain  us,  if 
the  heavy  parallels  of  ancient  history  and  classic  citation 
in  general  did  not  weary  and  repel  us.  But  it  was  this 
very  thing  which  encircled  his  brow  with  the  laurel 
eagerly  offered  by  his  contemporaries.  And  if  he  had 
written  all  this  in  his  own  superb  Tuscan,  we  would  read 
and  reread  with  permanent  delight.  But  as  for  Cicero, 
Vergil,  and  Seneca,  we  enjoy  them  more,  if  we  enjoy  them 
at  all,  at  first  hand  and  in  their  virginal  utterance. 

When,  at  thirty-two,  he  had  accomplished  the  ascent  of 
Mt.  Ventoux,  in  the  Provence,  not  far  from  his  favorite 
abode  of  Vauclause,  this  brought  to  his  mind  the  Haemus 
in  Thrace  and  Philip  of  Macedon,  Hannibal,  and  the 
Livian  story  of  his  passage  of  the  Alps,  as  well  as  Athos 
and  Olympus.  It  was  just  ten  years  that  he  had  brought 
to  conclusion,  at  Bologna,  his  academic  career.  His  soul 
was  flushed  and  strongly  moved  by  the  thought  of  much 
sin  and  folly  of  the  past,  the  feeble  and  imperfect  steps 


HUMANISM  AND  THE  HUMANISTS  29 

towards  betterment  and  Christian  virtue.  With  him  he 
had  a  copy  of  St.  Augustine's  Confessions :  he  opened  and 
accidentally  lighted  upon  10,  8,  6,  which  made  so  strong 
an  impression  upon  him  because  it  was  so  near  and  so 
much  in  harmony  with  his  own  favorite  train  of  thought, 
with  his  very  philosophy  of  life.  The  words  were  there: 
"  And  men  go  to  admire  the  peaks  of  mountains,  and  the 
huge  tides  of  the  sea,  and  the  vast  moving  volumes  of 
streams,  the  vast  extent  of  the  ocean,  and  the  orbit  of 
the  stars,  and  they  neglect  themselves"  Indeed,  he  goes 
on  to  say,  there  is  nothing  wonderful  besides  the  soul  of 
man  :  to  the  soul  nothing  is  great.  Here  we  have,  as 
Voigt  well  urges,  the  central  point  of  Petrarch's  concern : 
and  all  his  further  life  long  there  was  in  him  some  strug- 
gle between  the  cultural  and  the  spiritual  concerns  of  the 
soul.  And  still  his  active  actual  life  was  one  long  chas- 
ing after  the  phantom  of  glory,  immediate,  direct  contem- 
porary glory.  And  so  it  remains  to  him  a  moral  axiom 
("  Rerum  Senilium,"  V,  6)  that  to  richly  endowed  minds 
glory  is  a  mighty  spur  —  generosis  ingeniis  ingens  calcar 
est  gloria.  It  was  the  glory  attainable  through  human 
speech  and  its  literary  forms:  and  so  he  says  (in  the  same 
letter)  of  his  secretary  who  had  left  him:  "and  he  him- 
self, through  reading,  writing,  reflection,  imitation,  seemed 
destined  to  grow  better  day  by  day  and  destined  to  reach  the 
summit  of  a  lofty  name :  "  in  a  few  and  simple  words  we 
have  here  that  which  was  the  life  and  labor  and  the  goal 
of  the  Humanists  who  revered  in  Petrarch  their  founder 
and  great  exemplar. 

Few  mortal  men  are  able  to  bear  so  heavy  a  burden  as 
is  high  praise  of  one's  own  entire  generation;  a  more 
than  human  humility  would  be  required  for  any  man, 
soberly  to  realize,  that  his  whole  century  was  following  in 
his  footsteps  and  bidding  all  hail  to  the  pathfinder.  It 
was  Petrarch's  fortune,  if  fortune  it  be.  Many  were  the 
searching  visits  into  his  own  heart:  earnestly  he  often 
represented  to  his  soul  the  passing  of  this  little  life ;  he 
lay  down  on  his  couch  as  corpses  were  wont  to  be  laid  out 
for  burial ;  representing  to  himself  the  moment  of  disso- 


30  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

lution,  first,  and  all  the  awe  that  men  are  wont  to  associate 
with  the  great  crisis,  —  but  actually  he  remained  insatiable 
of  that  contemporary  glory  in  which  he  had  so  long  lived 
among  his  own  generation,  and  which  had  come  to  be  the 
very  atmosphere  of  his  being. 


The  church  fed  and  nurtured  this  pathfinder  of  the 
Humanists.  And  still  soon  it  was  clear  that  the  New 
Learning  at  bottom  tended  to  emancipate  its  devotees  from 
the  church,  nay,  from  the  very  basis  of  living  and  being 
on  which  it  was  at  first  grounded  and  reared.  The 
shocking  swiftness  with  which  was  revealed  the  interde- 
pendence of  the  new  movement  with  the  emancipation  of 
morals  and  morality  was  strikingly  revealed  in  an  admirer 
and  disciple  of  Petrarch,  viz.,  Giovanni  Boccaccio  of  Cer- 
taldo  near  Florence  (1313-1375),  nine  years  younger  than 
Petrarch.  The  Black  Plague  of  1348,  which  so  cruelly 
ravaged  Italy,  found  Boccaccio  thirty-five,  and  the  chain 
of  novels  which  is  reared  upon  this  catastrophe  constitutes 
the  most  powerful  plea  of  mere  animality  known  to  human 
letters.  I  am  too  fond  of  truth  and  too  profoundly  con- 
vinced of  the  eternal  obligation  of  divine  law  to  pour  any 
further  tepid  dish-water  into  the  well-established  puddle  of 
literary  admiration  —  obligate  —  which  wearily  iterates 
itself  in  the  books  of  the  literary  historians  and  sestheti- 
cians.  And  this,  while  Boccaccio  after  1361  would  have 
gladly  cancelled  and  recalled  his  "Novelle,"  when  it  was 
too  late.  "  Triumphant  Adultery  "  one  might  ins'cribe  the 
greater  portion  of  these  narratives.  From  Burckhardt's 
delineation  of  the  Renaissance  we  do  indeed  receive  the 
impression  that  little  exaggeration,  if  any,  of  social  disrup- 
tion and  decadence  is  here  met  with.  We  do  seem  indeed 
to  be  face  to  face  with  a  society  which  knew  no  romance 
beyond  the  snapping  asunder  of  matrimonial  law,  and 
shrank  from  no  detail  which  added  to  the  delineation  of 
impurity.  Contemptible  as  Boccaccio  made  purity  and 
marital  fidelity,  he  trampled  upon  a  sacrament  of  the 
church  as  well.  But  the  church  itself  and  its  official 


HUMANISM  AND  THE  HUMANISTS  31 

representatives,  the  clerics  from  the  Pope  down  to  hermits 
appear  in  these  "  Novelle  "  as  utterly  corrupt  and  contemp- 
tible. Boccaccio  hated  the  monks  even  in  his  character 
as  classicist  and  restorer  of  the  Old  Learning.  In  the 
great  library  of  Monte  Cassino  (where  he  often  stopped  in 
passing  and  repassing  between  Florence  and  Naples)  he 
noticed  with  disgust  how,  frequently,  the  indolent  clerics 
instead  of  studying  precious  parchments  of  old,  abraded 
the  ancient  characters  and  inscribed  missals  and  legenda- 
ries to  sell  them  to  the  people.  Other  classics  lay  in  dusty 
oblivion  on  the  shelves.  —  The  Jew  Abraham  of  Paris 
(I,  2),  willing  to  become  a  convert  to  Christianity,  goes  to 
Rome,  and  there  sees  the  "  court  of  Rome."  There,  with- 
out revealing  either  himself  or  his  mission,  he  studies  care- 
fully the  life  of  all.  He  finds  them  all  abandoned  to 
dissoluteness  both  natural  and  contrary  to  nature,  fond  of 
gluttony  and  the  bottle,  given  up  to  grasping  avarice  also, 
the  buying  and  selling  of  church  benefices  in  full  vogue, 
with  current  euphemism  for  all  this,  as  though  God,  says 
Boccaccio,  could  not  pierce  this  thin  veil.  Returning  to 
Paris  then,  the  Jew  Abraham  replies  to  his  Christian 
friend  :  "  As  I  judge  of  it,  with  all  anxious  device,  and 
with  all  his  native  power  and  with  every  art,  your  shep- 
herd, methinks,  —  and  consequently  all  the  others,  —  are 
rushing  forward  to  reduce  to  nothing  and  to  drive  out  of 
the  world  the  Christian  religion."  And  that  in  spite  of 
shocking  corruption  of  the  pastors  and  leaders,  the  Chris- 
tian religion  does  not  vanish  from  the  earth,  this — so  the 
Jew  Abraham  reasons  —  must  be  a  proof  of  that  religion's 
divine  character.  And  so,  in  Paris,  is  the  Jew  Abraham 
baptized. 

Still  more  incisive  is  Boccaccio's  attitude  towards  the 
Christian  church  in  his  novel  (I,  3)  of  the  three  rings, 
which  has  furnished  the  central  theme  to  that  classic  Song 
of  Songs  of  Deism,  Lessing's  "Nathan."  This  famous 
didactic  parable  leaves  it  quite  undetermined  and  un- 
determinable whether  Mosaism  or  Christianity  or  Mo- 
hammedanism has  the  better  or  more  divine  authority : 
each  earnest  in  asseveration  and  conviction,  none  really 


32  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

stronger  than  the  other.  Swift's  "Tale  of  the  Tub" 
will  occur  to  many  of  my  readers. 

The  "evil  hypocrisy  of  the  Religiosi"  is,  as  I  have 
above  suggested,  one  of  the  favorite  themes  of  these 
stories,  —  hypocrisy  largely  in  two  forms,  viz.,  those  of 
Greed  and  of  Lust.  The  corollary  that  they  were  not 
any  better  than  the  secular  people  who  went  about  their 
quest  without  any  pretence  or  cloak,  is  quite  obvious. 
We  are  fairly  entitled  to  believe  that  here  as  elsewhere 
this  clever  Florentine,  with  his  curious  mixture  of  moral 
indifference  and  searching  moral  satire,  merely  mirrored 
the  current  conviction  of  his  own  time.  Calm  and  delib- 
erate are  these  words  (I,  7)  :  "  The  vicious  and  foul  life 
of  the  clerics,  a  sure  sign  (fermo  segno)  in  many  matters 
of  wickedness,  without  undue  difficulty,  presents  itself  as 
an  object  of  conversation,"  etc. 

And  still  Boccaccio  made  his  peace  with  the  dominant 
corporation  of  human  life  of  his  day :  he  became  serious, 
he  turned  state  lecturer  on  the  life  and  works  of  Dante. 
Earnest  monition  had  reached  him  from  a  Carthusian  of 
Siena  to  change  his  life  and  his  works.  As  for  selling 
his  library  also,  Petrarch  dissuaded  him.  His  own  last 
years  were  full  of  disease  and  other  misery:  he  desired 
death  and  still  he  greatly  feared  it.  Suffice  to  say  that 
he  willed  his  library  to  Brother  Martino  da  Segna,  his 
confessor,  providing  that  ultimately  the  books  were  to 
go  to  the  convent  of  Santo  Spirito  of  Florence  for  the 
use  of  students.  One  may  fairly  ask  :  if  that  freedom 
and  that  emancipation  which  the  early  manhood  of  Boc- 
caccio did  so  much  to  spread  abroad  —  if  this  freedom 
was  good  and  wholesome  for  the  human  soul,  why  did  not 
its  erstwhile  devotee  proclaim  it  to  the  end  ? 


The  popes  indeed  had  returned  from  Avignon  and 
from  their  French  vassalage  to  the  Seven  Hills  of  Rome. 
But  after  a  few  years,  in  1378,  followed  the  election  of 
a  counterpope,  who  again  established  his  court  at  Avignon, 
Clement  VII,  who  thus  became  a  much  more  pronounced 


HUMANISM  AND  THE  HUMANISTS  33 

vassal  of  the  French  court  than  his  predecessors  had  been. 
Thus  began  the  great  Schism,  which  not  only  rent  Chris- 
tendom in  twain,  but  dealt  an  irreparable  blow  to  the 
Papacy  itself,  whose  Vicarage  of  God  was  now  in  the 
balance.  Whose  excommunication  was  divine?  At  the 
same  time,  each  court  with  its  full  measure  of  needs,  and 
with  the  reduction  of  the  taxable  area  for  each,  was  con- 
strained and  driven  by  sore  need  to  increase  the  financial 
burdens  which  it  imposed,  for  its  sustenance,  upon  its 
own  subjects. 

We  thus  reach  the  beginning  of  that  fifteenth  century 
of  European  History  which  was  destined  to  be  the  space 
of  time  made  memorable  by  the  Renaissance  of  Letters 
and  Art,  a  Golden  Age  indeed,  if  we  are  to  believe  some 
of  the  ecstatic  eulogists  thereof. 

But  it  is  utterly  unhistorical  to  ignore  the  profound 
and  very  essential  interdependence  which  prevailed  actu- 
ally between  the  Renaissance  and  the  decadence  and 
convulsions  marking  the  Annals  of  the  Church  itself. 
Who  were  the  leaders  of  Humanism  then  ?  What  sort 
of  men  were  they  ?  What  attitude  did  they  take  in  the 
agony  of  the  Church  and  in  those  tremendous  struggles 
which  were  made,  in  the  first  half  of  the  century,  at  Pisa, 
Constance,  and  Basle,  for  a  Reformation  of  Head  and 
Members  ? 

Poggio  Bracciolini  of  Florence  (1380-1459),  who  had 
studied  Greek  under  Manuel  Chrysoloras,  became  Apos- 
tolic Secretary  at  the  Papal  Curia  at  Rome,  in  1402  or 
1403.  It  is  not  necessary  here  to  enumerate  the  Latin 
Classics  which  he  conveyed  to  Italy  out  of  Swiss  or 
German  monasteries,  openly  or  by  filching  them.  Our 
task  here  is  to  gain  a  closer  view  of  his  moral  personality. 
If  he  had  any  moral  ideals,  the  very  court  of  which  he  was 
so  conspicuous  a  part  was  impregnated  with  practices  and 
principles  essentially  vicious  and  vile.  It  was  an  age 
"  when  the  psaltery  chimed  ill  with  the  secular  lyre," 
when  Balthasar  Cossa,  the  infamous  Neapolitan,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Sacred  College,  as  John  XXII  (charged  later 
with  having  procured  the  removal  of  his  predecessor 


34  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

through  poison),  became  an  expert  in  finding  new  prices 
for  the  entire  range  of  ecclesiastic  preferment. 

Of  all  the  works  of  Poggio,  his  collection  of  anecdotes 
alone  remains  in  the  hands  of  men  :  nor  can  they  be  read 
at  all  unless  we  agree  to  consider  them  a  pathological 
symptom  of  the  culture  and  concerns  of  the  foremost  men 
of  that  generation.  For  all  the  graces  and  turns  of  highly 
polished  Latinity  are  here  debased  to  the  service  of  jestful 
impurity,  compared  with  which  Boccaccio  is  elevated  and 
refined.  And  so  even  the  very  form  of  phrase  or  speech  in 
which  Cicero  had  presented  the  most  serious  thoughts  of 
the  Greek  sects  on  Religion  and  the  concerns  of  the  soul, 
the  tongue  in  which  the  incomparable  moralist  Seneca  had 
lashed  the  foibles  of  the  human  heart,  the  tongue  in  which 
venerable  forms  of  liturgy  and  worship  had  been  handed 
down  fairly  from  the  primitive  church  itself — this  noble 
and  grave  speech,  I  say,  was  debased  to  the  company  of 
Satyrs  and  Pan,  as  though  the  court-robe  of  a  great  and 
noble  lady  were  used  to  deck  a  smirking  and  berouged 
courtesan.  Nor  is  the  sang-froid  with  which  the  papal 
secretary  refers  to  the  corruption  of  his  own  class  as  a 
matter  of  course  and  of  no  further  concern,  to  be  neglected 
in  these  Facetiae. 

The  scorn  with  which  the  clerics  proper  do  duty  in  the 
Satire  of  this  Humanist  is  even  more  strongly  revealed  in 
his  Latin  dialogue  to  be  presently  named.  The  faintest 
sympathy  or  trace  of  concern  in  the  great  councils  of 
Constance  or  Basle  is  sought  and  searched  for  in  vain  in 
the  lines  of  Poggio.  His  "  Dialogus  contra  Hypocrisim  " 
was  written  in  his  advanced  age  under  the  great  Human- 
ist pope,  Nicholas  V  himself  (1447  sqq.}.  Poggio,  in  that 
famous  diatribe,  intimates  that  Eugene  IV  (1431-1447) 
had  been  surrounded  with  such  clerical  hypocrites,  ea- 
gerly pursuing  the  interests  of  their  several  orders.  The 
preachers  before  the  pope  had  furnished  Poggio  much  quiet 
amusement  with  their  empty  prattle.  One  faint  and  fleet- 
ing citation  of  St.  Matthew,  the  rest  Cicero,  Terence,  Sal- 
lust,  Seneca:  the  further  discourse, a  Chronique  Scandaleuse, 
in  which  there  is  infinitely  more  joy  in  the  vileness  itself 


HUMANISM  AND  THE  HUMANISTS  35 

than  moral  concern  whatever:  and  while  spreading  out 
this  putrescence,  Poggio,  entirely  in  the  manner  of  his 
great  rival  and  contemporary,  Laurentius  Valla,  slips 
into  a  defence  of  incontinence  as  being  obedience  to  an 
overmastering  impulse  of  our  common  nature :  utter- 
ances consummately  cynical  and  coming  from  a  mind  eman- 
cipated from  any  divine  law  and  subject  to  a  "humanity" 
of  its  own  fabrication.  All  this  dramatically,  with  an 
abbot  as  one  of  the  participants  in  the  dialogue.  And 
when  this  protagonist  of  the  new  learning  and  confiden- 
tial secretary  and  adviser  of  many  popes  concluded  his 
sweeping  charges  against  the  friars,  viz.,  that  their  pur- 
suit in  the  end  was  "  the  setting  of  bird-catchers'  traps 
for  women  or  money"  —  then  we  must  remember  that 
Poggio  retired  to  Florence  rich  and  honored  and  was 
buried  at  last  with  pomp  in  Santa  Croce. 

His  fellow-student,  Lionardo  Bruni  of  Arezzo,  was  a 
more  serious  soul  and  a  somewhat  nobler  character.  Pog- 
gio survived  him  to  deliver  his  funeral  eulogy  before  the 
magistrate  of  Florence. 

Early  he  too  served  in  Rome  as  Apostolic  Secretary, 
where  the  new  taste  for  purer  Latinity  determined  pre- 
ferment. His  scholarship  and  interest  in  the  newly  ac- 
quired Greek  seems  much  more  pure  and  genuine  than 
in  Poggio's  case.  He  refers  to  Plato  with  awe  :  "  The 
majesty  of  that  great  man."  Contemporary  history  and 
politics  are  wrapped  to  his  gaze  in  classic  names  and 
moulds ;  the  ancient  Romans  are :  Nostri,  our  own  men, 
our  own  ancestors.  He  calls  the  schism  of  popes:  "This 
pestiferous  division."  Bruni  himself,  while  he  saw  the 
curia  full  of  men  looking  for  preferment,  declined  the 
bishopric  offered  him  by  Innocent  VII. 

The  modern  Romans  are  a  poor  lot,  "  to  whom  from  their 
ancient  glory  nothing  but  empty  boasting  has  remained." 

He  too  visited  Constance  in  connection  with  the  great 
Council,  January,  1414.  His  correspondent  at  Florence, 
Niccoli,  indeed,  is  not  at  all  interested  in  ecclesiastic 
matters  :  his  soul  is  wrapped  up  in  the  renaissance  of 
the  old  letters;  to  him  church  affairs  are  "wearisome 


36  TESTIMONIUM  ANIM^J 

concerns  and  objects  of  craze  of  men"  (tcedia  et  delira- 
imnta  hominum).  Non-Italians  are,  of  course,  barbarians. 
He  calls  Nature  "that  mother  and  maker  of  the  Uni- 
verse." A  year  later  Bruni  was  settled  at  Florence  while 
Poggio,in  the  retinue  of  John  XXII,  was  at  the  Council. 
But  Bruni's  concerns  were  centred  as  before,  not  on  that 
matter  of  mighty  moment,  the  reformation  of  the  church, 
the  pacification  of  the  souls  of  Europe;  but  the  recovery 
of  the  classical  world  remained  the  essential  point  of  his 
concern.  "  This  "  (under  date  of  Sept.  13,  1416)  "  as- 
suredly will  be  thy  glory"  (to  Poggio),  "that  thou  art 
restoring  to  us,  through  thy  toil  and  care,  the  writings 
now  lost  and  perished,  of  eminent  men."  And  when  he 
hears  that  Quintilian  entire  is  at  last  regained,  he  wishes 
only  to  see  the  work  before  he  dies :  a  Nunc  dimittis  of 
the  ecstatic  classicist.  Poggio  had  written  with  enthu- 
siasm of  the  noble  defence  and  noble  death  of  Jerome 
of  Prague,  at  the  stake  :  "  You  might  have  called  him 
another  Cato," — his  eloquence  the  papal  secretary  had 
compared  "  with  that  of  the  ancients  whom  we  admire  so 
much  "  —  "  none  of  the  Stoics  ever  had  a  soul  so  unswerv- 
ing and  so  brave."  Bruni  warns  him  to  be  more  cautious 
in  praising  a  heretic.  Angrily  he  calls  a  detractor  at  Rome 
a  wretched  Sodomite.  His  study  of  Aristotle's  "  Ethics  " 
was  not  merely  historical  and  critical :  the  Stagirite 
furnished  to  his  soul  a  very  pabulum  and  dogma  :  a 
veritable  substance  and  authority,  while  Cicero  is  to  fur- 
nish the  literary  manner.  He  confesses  that  in  literary 
matters  he  has  become  a  voluptuary,  an  Epicurean.  He 
commends  a  certain  Englishman  who  has  come  to  Italy 
for  culture :  "  A  most  enthusiastic  devotee  (ardentissimus 
affectator)  of  our  own  studies,  as  far  as  the  endowment  of 
that  nationality  permits."  Referring  to  the  open  flout- 
ing of  moral  law  and  decency  of  life  by  one  of  the  fore- 
most classicists  of  Florence,  Niccoli  (Bruni,  "Epistolce," 
Florence,  1741,  Vol.  II,  20),  he  goes  on  to  say:  "and 
do  we  wonder,  if  this  is  the  opinion  of  the  common  peo- 
ple, that  the  men  devoted  to  the  study  of  letters  do  not 
believe  in  God,  do  not  fear  him  !  " 


HUMANISM  AND  THE  HUMANISTS  37 

This  same  Niccoli  is  called  by  a  modern  student  of 
these  times,  Gregorovius,  "  beautiful  personality."  O 
words,  words,  words !  And  still  this  same  ecstatic  de- 
lineator of  the  Renaissance  knows  his  ground  too  well  to 
be  quite  blinded  to  the  truth  ("  History  of  the  City  of 
Rome,"  Engl.  Tr.,  VII,  2,  531) :  "  But  in  spite  of  Dante, 
Cola  di  Rienzi,  Petrarch,  and  Boccaccio  (sz'c),  the  Renas- 
cence in  the  fifteenth  century  appears  as  a  sudden  resur- 
rection of  paganism  ..."  (p.  533),  "while  at  the  same 
time  the  laxity  of  morals  reached  a  depth  of  depravity 
equal  to  that  of  the  time  of  Juvenal."  The  interdepen- 
dence of  the  classic  cult  with  that  demoralization  is  ad- 
mitted. Why  then,  in  Gregorovius,  the  tedious  iteration 
of  "  noble  culture  "  ?  How  so  noble,  if  it  so  utterly,  so 
signally  failed  to  ennoble  its  most  prominent  devotees 
and  professors :  or  shall  we  also  become  ecstatic  and  call 
them  confessors? 

A  protagonist  among  them  was  Antonio  Beccadelli  of 
Palermo  (1394-1471),  student  at  Siena,  court  poet,  and 
secretary  and  historiographer  at  the  court  of  Alfonso  the 
Magnificent  of  Naples.  While  pursuing  academic  life  of 
the  baser  kind,  at  Siena  and  Bologna,  he  infiltrated  him- 
self with  the  matter  and  manner  both  of  the  debauched 
verse  of  Catullus,  Ovid,  and  Martial:  he  published  these 
elegies  of  pornography  in  1425-1426,  and  dedicated  them 
—  not  to  the  world  of  libertines  —  but  to  the  first  citizen 
of  Florence,  Cosmo  dei  Medici.  Even  Poggio  shook  his 
head,  but  Beccadelli  defended  himself  by  naming  "  Catul- 
lus, Tibullus,  Propertius,  Juvenal,  Martial,  splendid  poets 
and  Latin  poets  "  —  exemplars  in  the  literary  Olympus  of 
that  generation  and  a  court  of  last  appeal.  And  Guarino 
of  Verona,  the  classical  professor  so  highly  esteemed  as 
sane  and  industrious  and  of  reputable  conduct,  is  so 
ravished  with  the  literary  cleverness  of  this  verse  as  to 
greet  Beccadelli  as  a  rising  bard,  and  with  transcendent 
absurdity  to  compare  the  Sicilian's  muse  with  that  of 
Theocritus  !  Both  were  Sicilians.  And  as  to  the  gross- 
ness,  Guarino  finds  a  curious  justification  therefore:  "  Or 
will  you  on  that  account  bestow  less  praise  upon  Apelles, 


38  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

Fabius,  and  the  other  painters  because  they  painted  bare 
and  undraped  details  in  the  human  body  .  .  .  ?  "  "Of 
greater  weight  with  me  is  the  authority  of  a  poet  of  the 
same  earth  with  myself''  (conterranei :  he  alludes  to  Catul- 
lus), "a  poet  of  considerable  grace,  than  the  clamor  of 
the  uncultured,  whom  nothing  but  tears,  fasting,  psalmo- 
dies can  delight,  forgetting  that  one  there  must  be  placed 
before  our  gaze  in  life,  another  in  literary  expression." 

Such  were  the  dominant  voices  and  the  leading  senti- 
ments almost  throughout  this  entire  fifteenth  century, 
hailed  as  voices  of  the  light. 

A  far  stronger  mind  was  that  of  Beccadelli's  rival  at 
the  court  of  Naples,  Laurentius  Valla  (1406-1457).  He 
translated  Herodotus  and  Thucydides  and  with  keen 
study  of  Quintilian  more  than  of  Cicero  became  a  prac- 
tical model  and  laid  down  theories  of  pure  Latin  writing. 
He  served  his  master  Alfonso  of  Naples  efficiently  and 
thus  further  undermined  the  authority  of  the  papal  see, 
if  that  were  possible  then,  by  proving  the  Constantine 
donation  a  forgery,  but  shrinking  not  even  from  an 
attack  upon  the  Apostles'  Creed.  More  frankly  than  his 
fellow-humanists,  he  cast  aside  the  checks  and  norms  of 
divine  obligation  in  conduct.  His  essay,  "De  Voluptate  et 
vero  Bono"  gives  voice,  in  order,  to  Stoicism,  Epicurean- 
ism, and  Christianity.  The  second  voice  pleads  for  the 
justification  of  lust  and  against  the  immortality  of  the  soul 
and  against  a  judgment  to  come.  He  was  opposed  to  the 
Scholastics  of  his  time  who  held  that  the  Christian  Faith 
can  be  reasoned  out  in  the  Aristotelian  manner  and  pro- 
cedure. He  profoundly  detested  the  claims  of  the  Clerics 
—  claims  of  spiritual  superiority,  claims  of  being  some- 
thing apart  from  the  laymen.  In  his  essay,  "DeProfessi- 
one  Religiosorum"  he  attacks  these  spiritual  claims  of  that 
most  powerful  class  and  corporation  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
whose  autocratic  rule  even  then  was  being  enfeebled,  and 
in  this  controversy  exhibits  a  good  knowledge  of  St.  Paul. 
He  deals  vigorous  blows  too  against  the  normal  monastic 
vows,  and  quotes  St.  Paul  against  enforced  celibacy,  I  Tim- 
othy 4,  3,  and  goes  on  to  say:  "  O  would  that  bishops, 


HUMANISM  AND  THE  HUMANISTS  39 

priests,  deacons,  were  husbands  of  a  single  wife,  rather 
than  lovers  of  one  courtesan  !  "  The  Clerics  were  power- 
less to  destroy  the  bold  critic  who  reposed  under  the 
powerful  shield  of  King  Alfonso.  Under  the  Human- 
ist pope,  Nicholas  V,  Valla  even  triumphantly  entered 
Rome  itself  and  reaped  there  high  honors  and  rich  emolu- 
ments. "  Thus,  for  the  sake  of  his  erudition  and  stylistic 
talents,  the  supreme  pontiff  rewarded  a  man  whose  chief 
titles  to  fame  are  the  stringent  criticism  with  which  he 
assailed  the  temporalities  of  the  church  and  the  frank 
candor  with  which  he  defended  a  pagan  theory  of  human 
conduct"  ("Encycl.  Britannica ").  This  same  Pope 
Nicholas  was  much  more  moved  by  the  desire  to  save 
Greek  manuscripts  when  Constantinople  fell  than  to  save 
the  Greek  Empire  itself  from  the  Ottoman  deluge. 

More  clear-headed  on  these  grave  issues  of  the  Christian 
world  was  the  second  one  of  these  Humanist  popes,  Enea 
Silvio  Piccolomini,  who  took  the  title  of  Pius  II. 
Neither  he  nor  the  church  at  large  were  able  to  rouse 
distrustful  Europe  to  a  new  crusade;  the  laity  and  the 
feudal  aristocracy  merely  suspected  a  new  pretext  for  an 
impost  of  money.  As  for  this  Pius  II  himself,  how  could 
he  who  was  the  very  incarnation  of  secular  scheming  and 
a  man  of  the  world  in  his  character  and  career — how 
could  such  a  one  rouse  the  spirit  of  Peter  the  Hermit  or 
of  St.  Bernard  of  Clairvaux  ?  The  world  and  the  flesh, 
money  and  pleasure,  had  then  well-nigh  smothered  what 
spirituality  there  was  in  the  church. 

In  his  youth,  he  had  written  an  erotic  novel  in  which 
he  had  dissected  all  the  phenomena  and  all  the  sensuality 
of  sexual  passion  with  a  detail  and  a  love  for  these  things 
in  which  he  fairly  outdid  Boccaccio.  A  diplomatic  agent 
and  negotiator  of  great  prelates  of  the  Council  of  Basle, 
he  ultimately  became  the  secretary  and  adviser  of  Fred- 
eric III  of  Austria.  His  restless  and  active  mind  was 
bent  upon  grasping  the  actualities  of  things,  of  seizing  the 
vital  point  of  human  affairs.  He  loves  learning,  he  loves 
fully  as  much  money  and  power.  With  bright  and  exact 
eyes  he  outlined  eminent  contemporaries  in  his  "De  Viris 


40  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

illustribus."  Of  the  military  leader,  Braccio  de  Montone, 
he  says:  "  He  says  he  was  bitterly  hostile  to  the  clergy, 
thinking  there  was  nothing  after  death."  He  notes  the 
honors  and  the  rich  stipends  which  Guarino  won  at 
Ferrara,  where  he  taught  the  prince's  son  to  compose  a 
Latin  poem,  to  write  a  Latin  letter.  With  an  admiration 
(as  genuine  as  that  of  our  contemporary  journalists  when 
they  commend  the  millions  derived  from  some  accumula- 
tion of  industry)  he  expatiates  on  the  splendid  success  of 
Cosmo  dei  Medici,  richest  man  of  Florence,  nay,  of  Italy, 
whose  vast  financial  transactions  were  not  even  checked 
by  exile,  who  is  now  ruling  in  Florence  without  seeming 
to  rule:  who  furnishes  money  for  the  government  by  hav- 
ing the  revenues  hypothecated  to  himself.  His  mansion 
is  fine  enough  for  an  emperor.  He  has  built  the  mon- 
astery of  San  Marco  for  the  Dominicans.  There  he  has 
installed  "a  wonderful  library  packed  with  Latin  and 
Greek  books." 

The  present  successor  of  Bruni  in  the  chancellery  of 
Florence  is  Carlo  of  Arezzo,  "  soaked  in  Greek  and  Latin 
letters.  His  Latin  verse  is  written  with  good  taste  and 
his  prose  is  not  inferior  to  the  former."  In  his  own  youth 
Enea  Silvio  heard  the  glowing  ascetic,  the  Franciscan 
Bernardino  of  Siena  and  was  almost  swayed  to  follow  him. 

Barthold  of  Cremona,  apostolic  secretary  and  later  arch- 
bishop of  Milan,  who  crowned  the  emperor  Sigismund  at 
.St.  Ambrose's,  was  impregnated  with  Vergil  and  wrote  very 
good  Latin  verse.  Enea's  characterization  of  Sigismund 
(who  had  actually  brought  to  a  conclusion  the  great  schism) 
shows  how  church  politics  or  world  politics  were  equally 
manipulated  by  men  who  were  without  a  spark  of  inward 
religiosity.  "  Sigismund,"  says  Enea,  "  was  of  manifold 
impulse,  but  lacking  in  consistency,  witty  in  speech,  fond 
of  wine,  passionately  inclined  to  sexual  indulgences, 
charged  with  numberless  adulteries,  prone  to  wrath, 
easily  moved  to  forgiveness,  guardian  of  no  treasure,  a 
lavish  spender,  more  generous  in  the  promise  than  in 
keeping  his  word,  a  great  story-teller.  When  he  was  at 
Rome  with  Pope  Eugene,  he  said :  '  There  are  three 


HUMANISM  AND  THE  HUMANISTS  41 

things,  most  holy  father,  in  which  we  differ,  and  again 
there  are  three  in  which  we  agree.  You  sleep  in  the 
morning,  I  rise  before  daybreak.  You  drink  water,  I 
drink  wine.  You  flee  from  women,  I  pursue  them.  But 
we  are  at  one  in  these  things  :  you  generously  spend  the 
treasures  of  the  church,  I  keep  nothing  for  myself.  You 
have  gouty  hands,  I  have  gouty  feet.  You  are  ruining 
the  church,  I,  the  empire.'" 

We  pass  on  to  one  who  among  all  the  Humanists  of  the 
fifteenth  century  was  himself  a  conspicuous  exemplar,  a 
veritable  microcosm  of  the  entire  Classic  Renaissance. 

This  was  Francesco  Filelfo  (1398-1481).  Trained  at 
Padua,  and  a  budding  professor  of  the  Classics  at  Venice, 
he  spent  eight  important  years  at  Constantinople  as  sec- 
retary of  the  Venetian  embassy.  His  aim  was  to  become 
a  master  of  Greek.  Returning  to  Venice  in  1427,  with  a 
Greek  wife  and  a  collection  of  Greek  codices  noteworthy 
in  that  day,  he  was  engaged  by  some  of  the  richest  and 
most  prosperous  states  of  Italy  to  teach  the  language  and 
the  culture  of  the  Classics  :  he  thus  became,  in  a  way,  for 
longer  or  shorter  periods,  the  intellectual  centre,  the  auto- 
crat of  the  most  cherished  forms  of  learning  at  Florence, 
Siena,  Bologna,  and,  for  the  longest  stay,  at  Milan,  both 
under  Visconti  and  Sforza.  His  reading  was  wide,  his 
interest  in  Greek  and  Latin  letters,  antiquities,  and  above 
all,  in  the  reproduction  of  prose  and  verse,  was  genuine 
and  profound.  It  is  hard  for  one  who  has  carefully 
perused  some  one  of  the  folios  containing  letters  of  his,  to 
determine,  whether  his  craving  for  gold  or  his  desire 
to  acquire  codices  or  his  insatiable  appetite  for  notice 
and  renown  was  stronger  or  strongest. 

His  letters  often  were  composed  as  official  epistles  from 
state  to  state  by  direct  mandate  of  his  princely  patrons  at 
Milan.  Among  the  noble  or  distinguished  recipients  we 
notice  the  Emperor  of  Byzantium,  several  popes,  car- 
dinals and  archbishops  a  plenty,  the  republic  of  Florence, 
King  Charles  VII  of  France.  But  the  most  besetting  of 
all  his  sins,  the  typical  failing  of  the  Humanists,  was  his 
vanity.  At  thirty  (1428)  he  writes  to  his  fellow-human- 


42  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

1st,  Victorias  da  Feltre  :  "  that  thou  rejoicest  that  my 
name  is  dwelling  in  the  mouth  of  all,  far  and  wide, 
throughout  Italy.  ..."  "I  am  fully  aware  who  I  am!" 
.  .  .  Aristotle's  ethics,  rather  than  that  of  the  New 
Testament,  had  taken  possession  of  his  soul.  He  ad- 
dresses the  cardinal  of  Bologna  (in  1432)  as  "pater  hu- 
manusime."  At  Florence  (Oct.  1, 1432)  "the  eyes  of  all, 
the  conversation  of  all,  are  directed  towards  myself.  All 
rate  me  highly,  all  extol  me  to  the  sky  with  praises." 
He  reminds  Cosmo  dei  Medici  (May  1,  1433)  that  Cosmo 
had  first  called  on  Filelfo  when  the  latter  came  to  Flor- 
ence as  professor.  He  deplored  the  jealousy  of  two 
scholars  of  Florence :  "  but  are  they  really  superior  to 
me  in  native  ability,  in  learning,  in  power  of  literary 
expression,  in  taste  of  demeanor,  in  spotless  conduct  ?  " 

He  has  a  lively  consciousness  of  his  power  (dated  Siena, 
Sept.  13,  1438)  not  only  to  teach  classic  diction  to  youth, 
but  impart  to  them  the  most  refined  theory  of  ethics. 
With  all  this  vanity  which  was  powerfully  nurtured  by 
the  drift  of  the  times,  and  by  the  universal  itch  for  a 
quick  and  wide  reputation  —  with  all  this  there  was  in 
Filelfo  a  keen  and  trenchant  intelligence  which  forsook 
him  only  when  he  dealt  with  himself.  When  Filelfo  had 
entered  Milan  in  1440,  his  report  of  the  event  was  ren- 
dered in  these  words  :  "  My  arrival  was  received  with  great 
delight  both  by  this  distinguished  prince  as  well  as  by  the 
whole  commonwealth,  so  that  Filelfo  is  highly  regarded 
by  all."  His  theory  of  morals  gradually  takes  on  a  dis- 
tinctly Stoical  coloring  in  terms  and  categories.  This 
was  the  effect  of  his  academic  expounding  of  practical 
Stoicism,  and  that  noble  striving  for  the  boons  inherent  in 
the  soul,  a  soul  withdrawn  entirely  from  craving  of  wealth  or 
fame  —  of  this  there  is  not  the  slightest  trace  in  this  rep- 
resentative Humanist.  The  Envy  of  the  Gods  is  fused 
in  his  moralizing  with  a  frequent  admixture  of  ill-related 
Christian  phrase. 

It  is  clear  that  Filelfo's  desire  to  publish  ultimately  all 
his  letters  proved  a  check  on  him  (which  check  he 
utterly  threw  aside  in  his  "Satyrce").  As  many  others 


HUMANISM  AND  THE  HUMANISTS  43 

of  the  Humanists,  so  Filelfo  too  when  (rarely)  he  seems 
to  speak  with  genuine  sentiment  of  his  religious  feelings, 
betrays  that  vague  deism  of  God  and  Virtue  which 
went  hand  in  hand  with  peaceful  or  even  friendly  rela- 
tions to  church  and  to  Clerics  (in  the  miseries  brought 
on  by  the  siege  of  Milan,  Feb.  26,  1450)  :  "  whether  one 
should  call  that  Fate  or  Necessity  or  by  any  other  name 
whatsoever  —  that  which  is  above  us.  ..."  But  the 
chastening  influences  of  this  time  of  need  and  stress  seem 
actually  to  have  quickened  his  earlier  Christian  senti- 
ments: he  writes  in  October,  1450:  "  For  thou  knowest  well 
that  we  are  sojourners  only  in  a  strange  land,  and  are  un- 
free  as  long  as  we  live  here."  And,  soon  after  this  time, 
he  was  deeply  immersed  in  the  writing  of  his  frivolous 
" Satyrce"  In  short,  while  the  Humanists  charged  the 
Clerics  with  hypocrisy,  they  were  very  far  from  consist- 
ent sincerity  themselves,  much  as  they  vaunted  that  they 
spoke  and  lived  in  complete  harmony  with  their  convic- 
tions. Of  these  indeed  the  proud  belief,  that,  by  their 
Latin  verse,  they  could  bestow  immortality,  comparable  to 
that  once  bestowed  by  Vergil  or  Horace,  —  this  conceit 
was  exceedingly  strong,  and  we  must  add  it  produced  them 
many  purses  of  gold  from  those  who  were  thus  immortal- 
ized (cf.  letter  of  January,  1451  :  ex  hominibus  deos 
facer e  to  make  gods  out  of  men).  We  will  close  this 
brief  delineation  of  Filelfo  with  a  citation  from  an 
epistolary  admonition  directed  to  Poggio  and  Valla: 
Why  (March  7,  1453)  do  you  hate  me  so  bitterly  ?  And 
why  are  you  so  foul  towards  one  another  ?  "  As  far  as 
I  hear,  there  is  no  form  of  abuse,  which  while  you  are 
flashing  your  blades  at  one  another  through  every  insult 
of  vituperation,  you  have  left  unhandled.  And  that  too 
in  the  Roman  curia,  that  is,  in  the  most  famous  and  the 
most  brilliant  theatre  of  the  whole  world." 


The  tutor  of  the  children  of  Lorenzo  dei  Medici,  Poli- 
ziano,  in  his  mastery  of  Greek  and  Latin,  stood  quite  alone 
in  Italy  after  the  death  of  Filelfo  (1454-1494).  A  Wun- 


44  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

derkind  in  the  exceptional  precocity  of  his  early  resplen- 
dent powers,  translating  at  sixteen  several  books  of  Homer 
into  Latin  hexameter,  he  soon  lectured  at  Florence,  and 
from  this  academic  source  the  first  English  teachers  of 
Greek  as  well  as  the  German  Reuchlin  derived  impulse 
and  instruction. 

The  wonderful  ease  and  grace  of  his  Latin  verse  almost 
makes  one  pause  to  ask  whether  the  cunning  of  Horace, 
of  Catullus  or  Ovid,  had  actually  had  a  literary  palingene- 
sis on  the  Arno. 

But  we  must  turn  to  his  themes  and  look  beyond  this 
formal  facility.  We  see,  indeed,  the  paganism  of  glori- 
fying lust ;  both  Latin  and  Greek  verses  are  there  so  foul 
in  their  enthusiasm  of  unnatural  lust  that  we  marvel  not 
that  Madonna  Clarice,  the  wife  of  Lorenzo,  in  the  end 
caused  Politian's  removal  from  the  household,  as  being  a 
plague  to  her  sons.  This  man  was  teacher  of  the  future 
Pope  Leo  X. 

The  greatest  skill  and  an  almost  incredible  control  of 
word  and  phrase  does  Politian  display  in  this  verse,  in 
which  the  phenomena  of  mere  sexualism  are  enumerated 
in  a  manner  that  fairly  outdoes  the  Pans  and  Satyrs  of 
Catullus  and  Ovid.  We  notice  that  the  most  repulsive 
of  these  themes  both  in  Greek  and  Latin  is  so  turned  that 
the  more  recondite  tongue,  Greek,  is  to  him  an  even  more 
unrestrained  sphere  of  animal  abandon  and  truly  pagan 
art.  Weirdly  incongruous  there  appear  in  this  company 
of  Aphrodite  Pandemos  some  lines  of  a  quasi-religious 
nature  in  Greek  hexameters,  filled  of  course  with  solid 
patches  of  Homeric  phrase,  grotesque  application  of  Zeus- 
epithets  to  the  Almighty  to  whom  in  the  end  the  creature 
of  clay  confesses  his  sins.  But  the  studies  in  the  portfolio 
of  this  protagonist  among  the  later  Humanists  are  mainly 
pagan  and  unreservedly  so,  and  in  the  laudation  of  a  rav- 
ishing maiden,  masked  under  the  classic  name  of  Lalage, 
we  are  told  that  she  is  worthy  of  the  couch  of  Jove.  Two 
hymns  in  honor  of  the  Virgin  Mary  were  penned  by  the 
same  hand  (v.  "  Prose  Volgari  inedite  e  Poesie  Latine  e 
Ch-eche"  Florence,  Barbera,  1867). 


HUMANISM  AND  THE  HUMANISTS  45 

Meanwhile  the  notorious  decline  of  the  church  and  its 
government  had  kept  pace  with  this  much  vaunted  Re- 
naissance of  Classic  imitation.  Church  politics,  church 
government,  the  financial  exploitation  of  Christendom 
with  ever  new  forms  of  Sacerdotal  Commerce,  the  un- 
blushing secularization  of  the  central  see  of  Rome  and  all 
its  works,  the  conversion  of  the  Roman  pontiff  into  a 
prince  and  politician  among  the  princes  and  politicians  of 
Italy,  the  splendid  nuptials  of  papal  daughters,  the  estab- 
lishment of  short-lived  dynasties  and  principalities  for  pa- 
pal sons  —  these  and  many  more  things  mark  the  last  gen- 
eration of  the  Italian  quattro  cento.  The  paganism  of  the 
Humanists  found  itself  in  calm  concord  with  the  general 
drift.  This  church  and  this  world  indeed  were  as  one, 
nay,  they  were  merely  different  phases  of  the  same  world. 
In  1478  Pope  Sixtus  IV  supported  the  murderous  plot 
of  the  Pazzi  at  Florence,  in  which  a  brother  of  Lorenzo 
dei  Medici  was  actually  stabbed  to  death  in  a  church  dur- 
ing divine  worship,  and  Lorenzo  himself,  the  central  saint 
in  the  wearisome  cult  of  the  Renaissance,  barely  escaped. 
The  pope  made  his  case  worse  by  issuing  an  edict  of  ex- 
communication against  all  Florence,  all,  it  seems,  on  ac- 
count of  the  political  interests  of  the  Count  of  Imola,  his 
nephew. 

In  1484  Innocent  VII  succeeded.  He  had  seven  bas- 
tard children.  He  had  pledged  himself  to  the  cardinal 
politicians  of  the  conclave  to  promote  but  a  single  one  of 
his  kin.  He  broke  this  pledge,  and  also  enraged  the 
municipal  Romans  by  bestowing  the  fat  places  on  non- 
Romans.  He  chose  his  son-in-law  of  Genoa,  a  financier, 
to  supervise  the  city  taxes  ;  in  fact,  with  the  commercial 
spirit  of  his  native  Genoa  well  expressed,  he  was  cleverly 
attentive  to  the  papal  ledger.  One  of  his  sons  married 
a  daughter  of  Lorenzo,  the  so-called  magnificent.  As  a 
practical  consequence  of  this  family  alliance,  three  years 
later  Lorenzo's  son  John  was  made  a  cardinal,  though  a 
mere  stripling  of  fourteen,  destined  to  become  pope 
further  on,  and  last  of  the  Humanist  popes,  a  species 
which,  after  the  revolt  of  Luther,  became  somehow  quite 


46  TESTIMONIUM  ANI&LE 

impossible,  a  cessation  which  the  Herr  Geheirarath  von 
Goethe  greatly  deplored  in  his  time.  In  1492  Alexander 
VI  (Roderigo  Borgia)  at  sixty-two  purchased  the  papacy 
from  his  fellow-cardinals.  What  he  did  for  his  children 
and  what  they  were  and  what  they  did,  is  it  not  recorded 
in  the  diary  of  the  papal  master  of  ceremonies,  Burchard  ? 
Recorded,  I  say,  in  a  very  cold-blooded  manner,  although 
the  Latin  is  not  at  all  up  to  the  Humanistic  standard. 
And  so  we  will  leave  the  genial  Cesare  and  the  romantic 
Lucrezia  to  those  who  wish  to  rave  about  the  great  moral 
emancipation  wrought  in  beautiful  Italy  by  the  Renais- 
sance ;  or  when  they  have  become  a  little  exhausted  by 
the  ecstasies  of  the  comely  Walter  Pater,  ecstasies  about 
Mona  Lisa  or  some  other  item  in  the  latter's  calendar  of 
Renaissance  saints  both  male  and  female,  to  which  I  sup- 
pose Rafael's  Fornarina  also  belongs.  For  the  aesthetic 
Pater  is  indeed  a  great  guide  in  the  worship  of  the 
beautiful,  and  if  the  senses  could  replace  the  conscience, 
and  if  the  emancipation  of  the  flesh  could  make  the 
spiritual  needs  of  the  soul  dispensable,  then  the  ecstatic 
worshipper  of  the  comely  would  indeed  not  be  what  he  is, 
a  blind  leader  of  the  blind. 

An  arch-saint  also  in  the  traditional  cult  of  the  Renais- 
sance was  Lorenzo  dei  Medici,  very  magnificent  indeed  in 
spending  the  wealth  of  his  grandfather  and  barely  suc- 
cessful in  concealing  his  own  insolvency  with  money  that 
belonged  to  the  commonwealth  :  a  commonwealth  that  he 
had  with  cunning  planning  gradually  deprived  of  self- 
government,  and  which  under  his  wretched  son  Peter 
became  an  easy  prey  to  France.  We  must  content  our- 
selves here  with  transcribing  from  the  pages  of  Villari, 
one  of  the  most  patriotic  and  learned  Italians  of  these  lat- 
ter times  :  "  Among  all  his  inventions,  the  most  celebrated 
were  those  called  the  Canti  Carnascialeschi,  gay  ballads, 
composed  for  the  first  time  by  him,  and  intended  to  be 
sung  at  masquerades  during  the  carnival.  ..."  "  We 
cannot  have  a  better  picture  of  the  corruption  of  those 
days  than  by  reading  those  songs.  In  the  present  da;y, 
not  only  the  young  nobles,  but  the  lowest  rabble  would 


HUMANISM  AND  THE  HUMANISTS  47 

be  disgusted  by  them,  and  were  they  to  be  sung  in  the 
streets,  it  would  be  such  an  outrage  to  public  decency  as 
to  call  for  punishment.  But  their  composition  was  the 
favorite  occupation  of  a  prince  praised  by  all  the  world, 
and  held  up  as  a  model  to  other  sovereigns  as  a  prodigy 
of  talent,  as  a  political  and  literary  genius.  And  such  as 
he  was  then  reckoned,  many  now  hold  him  to  have  been. 
He  is  pardoned  by  them  for  the  blood  he  shed  in  main- 
taining a  power  which  had  been  unjustly  acquired  by 
his  family  and  himself  ;  for  the  disorders  he  caused  in 
the  republic  ;  for  plundering  the  public  treasury  to  de- 
fray his  extravagant  expenditure  ;  for  the  indecent  prof- 
ligacy to  which  he  was  given  up,  although  infirm  of 
body  ;  and  for  the  rapid  and  infernal  system  of  corrup- 
tion of  the  people  —  an  object  to  which  he  never  ceased  to 
apply  the  whole  force  of  his  mind  :  and  all  this  is  over- 
looked because  he  was  a  patron  of  letters  and  the  fine  arts." 

But  Erasmus  remains,  and  without  some  view  and 
vision  of  this  protagonist  among  the  Humanists  this  chap- 
ter would  be  wretchedly  truncated  and  inadequate.  Of 
him  even  in  our  own  day  may  be  said  what  Schiller  said  of 
Wallenstein.  For  here  too  preeminently  do  we  see  the 
variation  and  vacillation,  the  mutations  and  oscillation  in 
the  delineations  of  his  character,  which  are  due  to  the 
favor  and  to  the  hatred  of  party  and  faction. 

I  must  be  somewhat  precise  myself.  Fair  indeed  I  can- 
not be  to  those  critics  who  with  the  literary  and  eesthetical 
voluptuary  Goethe  and  all  his  school  and  kin  deplore  the 
reformation  as  a  jarring  in  the  current  of  the  Renaissance, 
and  as  a  displacement  of  a  movement  dear  to  them  by 
one  alien  to  them. 

For  a  century  or  more  had  the  more  earnest  spirits  whose 
spirituality  had  not  been  smothered  by  the  inferior  things 
cried  out  for  a  radical  betterment.  The  Humanists  had 
contributed  somewhat  less  than  nothing  to  this  cry  and 
craving.  Their  satire  could  not  amount  to  anything  be- 
cause they  themselves  were  the  most  pronounced  advocates 
of  that  emancipation  of  the  flesh  which  they  fully  and 
unrestrainedly  exemplified  in  their  own  lives.  Erasmus 


48  TESTIMONIUM  ANIALE 

then,  born  and  reared  in  the  time  of  great,  if  not  the 
greatest,  humiliation  of  the  papacy,  was,  in  the  production 
of  Latin  letters,  the  greatest  of  all  the  Humanists.  A 
keen  and  penetrating  soul  was  his,  and  the  lifelong  occu- 
pations of  critical  scholarship  were  ever  whetting  that 
edge.  Is  there  anywhere  in  literature  a  more  radical 
satire  than  his  Praise  of  Folly  ("  Encomium  Morice"  1509)  ? 
Lye  and  vitriol,  vitriol  and  lye,  do  drip  from  this  pen,  scorn 
and  sweeping  condemnation  alone  is  here  uttered,  in  the 
cosmopolitan  scholar's  learned  tongue.  We  may  ignore 
the  classicist  embroideries  so  dear  to  the  Renaissance  and 
their  humanists:  to-day  indeed  no  one  would  tolerate  such 
in  the  letters  that  people  cherish.  And  so  we  ignore 
what  his  time  so  eagerly  cherished :  his  allusions  to  Midas, 
Pan,  Hercules,  Solon,  Jupiter,  Plutus,  Homer,  Hesiod, 
Gardens  of  Adonis,  of  which,  in  spite  of  the  ever  increas- 
ing erudition  of  little  coteries,  the  souls  of  men  have  be- 
come somewhat  weary.  There  is  much  affinity  with 
Lucian,  some  of  whose  things  Erasmus  edited.  But  he 
also  edited  the  New  Testament  and  spared  not  there  the 
arid  futilities  of  scholasticism  nor  the  actual  corruption  in 
the  actual  church.  It  was  in  the  air:  in  England  noble 
souls,  men  like  Colet  and  Thomas  More,  became  his  friends. 
Again  and  again  he  visited  England,  and  the  young 
Prince  Henry  assured  him  that  he  wrote  a  style  which  all 
the  world  praised.  After  he  had  gained  European  celebrity 
through  Aldus  of  Venice,  and  during  a  sojourn  at  Rome, 
after  this  he  was  again  invited  to  England,  where  he  notes 
that  Thomas  More  "  has  his  hours  of  prayer,  but  he  uses 
no  forms  and  prays  out  of  his  heart."  Even  then,  in 
1509,  the  corruption  of  things  clerical  and  ecclesiastical 
was  so  universally,  so  perpetually  felt,  that  the  young 
king,  Henry  VIII,  uttered  these  words  (whether  the 
ideas  had  oozed  into  his  soul  from  men  like  Colet,  I  do 
not  know) :  "  It  has  been  and  is  my  earnest  wish  to 
restore  Christ's  religion  to  its  pristine  purity." 

To  proceed:  the  revival  of  the  Scriptures  followed  upon 
the  revival  of  the  Classics.  Which  was  more  potent? 
Which  was  more  important  ?  As  for  Erasmus,  he  loved 


HUMANISM  AND  THE  HUMANISTS  49 

truth  in  a  certain  intellectual  and  scholarly  way,  and  he 
loved  to  utter  his  satire  :  and  still  he  understood  with 
marvellous  adroitness  to  maintain  pleasant  and  profitable 
relations  with  the  very  powers  whose  substance  and 
foundations  he  had  so  brilliantly  attacked.  Thus  in  his 
New  Testament,  on  Matthew  19,  12,  he  had  published 
sharp  comments,  widely  condemnatory  of  the  practices  of 
the  clergy  in  his  day.  On  Matthew  24,  23,  he  had  com- 
pared the  military  pope  Julius  II  to  Pompey  and  Caesar; 
elsewhere  he  had  proclaimed  against  the  use  of  Latin  as 
the  language  of  public  worship;  on  I  Timothy  1,  6,  he 
had  condemned  the  problems  of  scholastic  theological 
learning;  on  I  Timothy  3,  2,  he  had  fairly  approved 
clerical  marriage  (as  had  Valla  before  him):  and  still, 
curiously  enough,  his  New  Testament,  of  which  100,000 
copies  were  sold  in  France  alone,  was  published  with  the 
approbation  of  Giovanni  dei  Medici,  better  known 
as  Leo  X,  last  of  the  Humanist  popes,  quondam  pupil  of 
Poliziano,  and  long  canonized  in  the  Renaissance  cult. 

There  was  probably  no  single  soul  in  the  church  more  pro- 
foundly indifferent  to  the  New  Testament  than  Leo  himself. 
Leo  is  he  of  whom  a  distinguished  English  critic  and  ex- 
pert in  Italian  letters  (Richard  Garnett)  wrote  ("  Encycl. 
Britannica  ") :  "  The  essential  paganism  of  the  Renaissance 
was  not  then  perceived."  "His  aesthetic  pantheism, 
though  inspired  by  a  real  religious  sentiment "  (whatever 
that  may  be,  Dr.  Garnett),  "  fixed  the  reproach  of  pagan- 
ism upon  her  "  (the  church)  "  at  the  precise  moment  when 
an  evangelical  reaction  was  springing  up."  He  and  his 
Italian  generation  were  greatly  interested  in  Beauty  and 
Pleasure,  but  in  no  wise  were  they  concerned  in  spiritual 
things.  To  our  ears  it  is  mere  timbrel  noise  when  his 
beneficiary  and  biographer,  Paul  Giovio,  Bishop  (save 
the  mark)  of  Nocera,  raves  about  that "  Golden  Age  "  and 
calls  his  patron  the  "delight  of  the  Human  race."  It  is 
this  man  then  of  whom  Erasmus  made  a  kind  of  patron 
for  himself.  For  some  one  wrote  to  Erasmus  in  1514  or 
thereabouts  :  "  The  Holy  Father  was  charmed  with  your 
style."  So  great  was  Erasmus  become  that  he  could 


50  TESTIMONIUM  ANI&LE 

afford  to  decline  a  bishopric  offered  him  by  young  Charles 
of  Spain.  In  dedicating  his  Jerome  to  Leo  X  he  indulged 
iu  flattery  so  fulsome  that  Leo  recommended  him  to  Henry 
VIII  for  an  English  bishopric.  We  must  credit  his 
biographer  and  eulogist,  Anthony  Froude,  with  very  con- 
siderable candor,  when  he  says  ("Life  and  Letters  of 
Erasmus,"  1894,  p.  205)  :  "  He  (Erasmus)  had  none  of  the 
passionate  horror  of  falsehood  in  sacred  things  which  in- 
spired the  new  movement."  The  reader  must  be  reminded 
here  also  that  in  these  grave  matters,  Froude  indeed  took 
sides,  and  emphatically  (on  p.  206)  utters  his  denial  of  any 
divine  revelation,  and  also  sets  forth,  that  on  questions  of 
absolute  religious  truth  the  temperament  of  Erasmus  was 
essentially  negative.  The  great  crisis  of  1517  forced  men 
into  avowals  and  into  definite  positions.  But  Erasmus 
chose  to  abide  with  and  within  the  church  which  he  had 
so  bitterly  satirized  and  censured.  And  even  after  the  ref- 
ormation had  actually  begun,  he  wrote:  "  Time  was,  when 
learning  was  only  found  in  the  religious  orders.  The  re- 
ligious orders  nowadays  care  only  for  money  and  sensuality, 
while  learning  has  passed  to  secular  princes  and  peers  and 
courtiers."  And  still  he  says  of  himself:  "  I  have  written 
nothing  which  can  belaid  hold  of  against  established  order." 
"  I  would  rather  see  things  left  as  they  are  than  to  see  a 
revolution  which  may  lead  to  one  knows  not  what.  Others 
may  be  martyrs  if  they  like.  I  aspire  to  no  such  honor." 
"  Luther's  movement  was  not  connected  with  learning  " 
(p.  288,  Froude).  Abundantly  the  arch-humanist  testifies 
that  the  great  revolt  and  the  rehabilitation  of  the  New 
Testament  was  essentially  not  kin  to  Humanism.  "  You 
remember  Reuchlin,"  he  wrote  on  Oct.  10,  1525,  "  the 
conflict  was  raging  between  the  Muses  and  their  enemies  " 
(the  "JSpistolce  Obscurorum  Virorwm"}  "when  up  sprang 
Luther  and  the  object  thenceforward  was  to  entangle 
the  friends  of  literature  in  the  Lutheran  business  so  as  to 
destroy  both  them  and  him  together." 

Nor  do  we  hear  of  any  martyr  for  spiritual  truth  in  the 
fatherland  of  Humanism,  Italy.  They  were  generally 
quite  willing  to  accept  some  preferment  in  the  church  it- 


HUMANISM  AND  THE  HUMANISTS  51 

self :  when  they  were  sometimes  eager  to  suppress  some 
of  their  Latin  verse.  The  reformation  was  to  them,  to 
use  a  phrase  of  Giovio's,  "  the  crazy  mouthing  "  of  the 
Saxon  monk,  and  they  continued  to  measure  everything 
by  the  "majesty  of  Cicero's  style."  For  such  a  one 
Savonarola  was  an  object  of  taunts  and  reproach.  The 
exotic  repristination  of  letters  of  long  ago  in  the  naive 
conviction  that  these  forms  were  a  finality  of  perfection  — 
with  but  slight  immersion  in  Greek  —  this  remained  the 
type  of  the  Italian  Humanist. 

But  their  immorality  and  generally  contemptible  char- 
acter rather  made  a  byword  of  the  name  Urnanista,  as  we 
may  see  in  the  Seventh  Satire  of  Ariosto,  when  the  great 
poet  of  Ferrara  on  the  one  hand  speaks  of  the  humanistic 
culture  as  of  the  "  arts  which  exalt  man,"  but  also  adds 
that  few  Humanists  are  really  free  from  the  practice  of 
unnatural  lust.  Much  of  the  current  coin  had  proven 
spurious  :  the  world  wearied  of  it. 

Uncritical  admiration  and  mechanical  reproduction  had 
seemed  to  the  leading  minds  of  Europe  for  some  two  hun- 
dred years  a  finality  of  culture  :  thus  they  had  committed 
the  grave  arid  stupendous  error  of  ignoring  the  broad 
basis  of  sin  and  corruption,  the  worship  of  nature  and  the 
apotheosis  of  our  common  clay,  which  lie  at  the  base  of 
the  history  of  the  classic  world,  together  with  that  rigid 
limitation  of  concern  in  narrow  bounds  of  petty  republics 
or  the  glorification  of  force,  as  in  Rome. 

The  Humanists,  in  a  word,  knew  the  ancient  world  but 
ill,  but  as  the  bluebottles  gather  around  the  carcass  of  an 
animal,  or  clouds  of  gnats  hover  over  the  effluvia  of  the 
barnyard,  so  many  of  them  circled  around  what  was  de- 
based and  putrescent  in  the  letters  and  art  of  the  classic 
past  of  the  Mediterranean  world. 


NOTE.  —  Much  of  the  available  leisure  during  two  years  of  my  life 
was  devoted  to  the  task  of  gaining  a  closer  and  fairer  vision  of  this  im- 
portant subject.  For  I  have  a  constitutional  dislike  of  using  aught  but 
first-hand  material.  Burckhardt,  it  may  be  well  to  note  for  younger 
readers,  with  all  his  mastery  of  infinite  detail,  is  wholly  under  the 


52  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

thrall  of  Hegelianism.  Pater  is  a  morbid  worshipper  of  the  Beautiful. 
Geiger's  "  Petrarka  "  is  not  very  searching  and  decidedly  inferior  to 
Voigt.  In  Symonds's  fine  books  there  is  a  note  of  sadness.  I  will  now 
briefly  enumerate  some  of  my  more  original  material.  But  I  must 
content  myself  now  with  mere  enumeration :  J.  A.  Froude,  "  Life  and 
Letters  of  Erasmus,"  1891 ;  Erasmus,  "  Encomium  Moriae " :  Pe- 
trarch's Latin  works,  fol.  Basle,  1581 ;  Boccaccio,  "  Decamerone  " ;  Leo- 
nardo Bruni,  "  Epistolae,"  ed.  Mehus,  Florence,  1741 ;  Macchiavelli, 
"  The  Prince  " ;  Burchardi  "  Diarium  " ;  Traversari,  "  Epistulae,"  in 
Muratori ;  Enea  Sylvio,  "  De  Viris  illustribus  "  ;  Poggio,  "  Dialogus 
contra  Hypocrisim  " ;  the  same  author,  "  Facetiae  " ;  von  der  Hardt, 
"  Documents,  etc.,  of  the  Council  of  Constance  " ;  Gieseler,  "  Church 
History,"  Vol.  4  ;  Patdus  Jovius  (Giovio),  "  Vita  Leonis  Decimi  " ; 
the  same  author,  "  Elogia  vivorum  in  literis  illustrium " ;  Filelfo, 
"Epistolse,"  Venice,  1489;  L.  Valla,  various  essays;  L.  dei  Medici 
autobiographical  sketch. 

Of  the  painters  of  the  Renaissance  I  will  say  little  ;  but  compare 
their  treatment  of  the  traditional  biblical  and  religious  subjects  with 
that  of  the  outright  mythological  ones,  which  they  owed  really  to  the 
craze  of  the  Humanists.  You  will  then  see  as  in  a  flash  how  the 
worship  of  beauty  per  se  had  come  into  power  and  how  spirituality 
had  departed.  Compare,  e.g.,  Lionardo  da  Vinci's  head  of  John  Bap- 
tist with  the  same  painter's  head  of  Leda.  It  is  incredible  how  much 
there  is  of  the  same  mould  and  design,  pose  of  head,  and  that  gentle 
smile  or  faint  suggestion  of  a  smile  over  which  the  conoscenti  rave. 
His  Christ  bearing  the  cross  is  by  no  means  St.  Bernard's  Salve  caput 
cruentatum  —  but  is  of  incredible  physical  beauty.  Merely  cancel 
cross  and  crown  of  thorns,  and  fairly  nothing  remains  of  the  Man  of 
Sorrows  and  the  Redeemer  of  the  World. 


CHAPTER  III 

GODS  AND  MEN  IN  HOMER  AND  HESIOD 

IN  settled  Greek  education,  Homer  simply  was  The 
Poet.  Merely  to  trace,  to-day,  the  erudition  bestowed  by 
Greek  scholars  upon  these  Epics,  would  be  a  task  of 
many  years  (Sengebusch).  One  has  spoken  of  the  Greek 
Bible.  The  Greeks  as  a  nationality  certainly  never 
dropped  or  disavowed  those  poems  of  their  Gods  and 
mighty  men  of  war.  I  am  uttering  a  commonplace  of 
academic  tradition.  Even  as  I  write,  Greek,  as  an  ele- 
ment of  general  or  liberal  education,  is  receding  like  an 
ebb-tide  :  and  while  learned  men  will  certainly  maintain 
Greek  erudition,  culture  derived  or  derivable  from  Greek 
will  be  ever  more  circumscribed.  The  more  need  of  a 
book  like  mine.  Gladstone's  "  Juventus  Mundi "  is  a 
term  fairly  commonplace.  But  these  Epics  are  by  no 
means  primeval,  let  alone  primitive,  things.  Centuries 
may  have  passed  until  they  assumed  the  form  in  which 
not  Solon  only,  but  before  him,  Archilochos  or  Hesiod 
even,  heard  or  chanted  them.  The  best  units  of  metrical 
phrase  and,  particularly,  of  hexametrical  cadence,  early 
passed  into  usage  and  currency.  I  must  decline  here  to 
drag  in  any  tags  or  tatters  of  erudition,  or  tell  —  for  who 
cares — what  the  various  critics  have  uttered,  critics  from 
Plato  or  Aristotle,  from  Aristarchos  of  Alexandria,  from 
Krates  of  Pergamos,  down  to  Porphyry,  down  to  Wolf, 
Lehrs,  Grote,  Jebb,  or  Seymour.  I  must  disavow  any 
concern  as  to  how  these  things,  the  Gods  of  Greece,  were 
"evolved":  concern,  e.g.,  for  Herbert  Spencer's  "Ani- 
mism" or  any  other  figment  misbegotten  out  of  present 
scientific  conceits. 

53 


54  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

It  is  the  singer  who  creates  and  transmits  fame  and 
repute,  chanting  in  baronial  halls  —  he  an  essential  con- 
comitant of  an  aristocratic  order  of  society.  So  Phemios 
in  the  Odyssey  (8,  479)  is  the  son  of  "  Terpios  "  (who 
produces  delight.)  This  singing  of  Gods  and  men  had 
long  been  going  on  when  these  Epics  were  making.  The 
legends  themselves  were  as  the  warp:  and  as  for  the  woof 
(of  phrase),  the  shuttle  of  centuries  had  been  active. 
Each  community  had  its  local  heroes  and  legends:  at 
Corinth  it  was  Sisyphos  and  Bellerophontes;  in  southern 
Thessaly,  Peleus,  Thetis  and  Achilles,  Jason  and  Medea ; 
in  Thebes  and  Argos,  Heracles;  in  Crete,  Europa  and 
Zeus,  Minos  and  Pasiphae,  Minotaur  and  Daidalos  ;  in 
Thebes  again,  the  dark  fate,  the  woes  and  curses  of 
CEdipus;  at  Argos,  in  particular,  the  golden  gleam  of 
Pelops  and  the  curse  upon  his  house,  and  many  more. 
Almost  any  of  these  might  have  been  wrought  into  an 
epic  of  the  bulk  and  worth  of  the  Iliad.  The  vale  he 
happened  to  traverse,  the  hall  where  he  was  entertained, 
determined  the  theme  of  the  travelling  singer.  But 
whether  the  minstrel  was  matched  in  direct  contest  (agdri) 
or  whether  he  had  to  chant,  where  many  a  harper  had 
chanted  before  ("  Hymnus  on  Delian  Apollo,"  169  sqq.*)  — 
he  was  compelled  to  strive  to  excel.  Thus  were  produced 
the  hexametrical  formulae  in  a  practice  where  the  ear  was 
trained  wonderfully,  even  long  before  the  general  use  of 
letters:  formulae,  I  say,  satisfying  and  iterated  without 
causing  critical  offence.  The  charm  of  exceptionally  per- 
fect elocution,  rather  than  the  creation  of  anything  really 
new,  was  that  which  gave  pleasure,  a  pleasure  which 
approved  of  "  immortal  gods,  who  hold  the  wide  heaven," 
"  the  child  of  the  Aigis-holding  Zeus,"  "  shepherd  of  the 
people,"  "  Hear  me,  O  Lord,"  "  ambrosial  night,"  "  rose- 
fingered  Dawn,"  and  a  hundred  more  formulary  units  of 
hexametric  phrase.  But  even  more  did  the  singers  thus 
fix  and  canonize  the  Gods  and  their  attributes. 

But,  while  of  epic  art  and  kindred  matters  I  could  not 
well  say  less,  I  must  not  say  more:  Bacon,  on  the  whole, 
has  well  said  on  this  subject:  "  for  you  may  imagine  what 


55 

kind  of  faith  theirs  was,  when  the  chief  doctors  and  fathers 
of  their  church  were  the  poets. "  Poets  and  poetical  minds 
will  always  feel,  as  Schiller  did,  much  affinity  for  these 
bright  images,  for  these  significant  symbols  of  nature.  I 
must  now  ask  the  reader  to  consider  well  the  much  quoted 
words  of  Herodotus,  II,  53  (after  stating  that  the  Hel- 
lenes took  over  the  names  of  the  Gods  from  the  Pelas- 
gians,  Herodotus  goes  on  to  say) :  "  but  whence  each  of 
the  Gods  arose,  whether  even  they  always  were,  all  of 
them,  what  kind  of  beings  they  were  as  to  their  shapes, 
they  (the  Greeks)  did  not  know,  so  to  speak,  until  the 
day  lief  ore  yesterday  and  yesterday"  (compared  with 
Egypt).  "  For  I  think  that  Hesiod  and  Homer  as  to  age 
were  four  hundred  years  before  my  time  (i.e.  before, 
about,  430  B.C.)  and  not  any  more  :  these  are  the  ones 
who  made  (we  should  say  fixed  or  canonized)  a  theogony 
for  the  Greeks,  both  bestowing  upon  the  Gods  their 
appellations  and  discriminating  their  (various)  honors 
and  functions,  and  indicating  their  forms."  A  great 
number  of  later  poets  and  prose  writers  dealt  with  these 
things,  Pindar,  ^Eschylus,  the  beginners  of  Greek  histori- 
ography—  but  the  consciousness  of  the  Greeks,  broadly 
speaking,  remained  unaffected,  unimpressed,  unswayed, 
by  these  epigones,  many  of  whom  nobly  strove  to  elevate 
or  to  refine  the  religious  ideas  of  their  countrymen. 
The  descriptions  of  local  usages  as  they  are  given  by 
Pausanias  in  the  sunset  of  Greek  paganism,  abundantly 
testify  how  naively,  and  how  stubbornly,  these  things 
were  actually  conserved. 


What  we  seek  here  is  this  :  not  to  carry  owls  to  Athens, 
nor  to  add  any  new  theory  to  those  sleeping  in  the  her- 
baria of  libraries,  but  to  set  forth,  with  the  utmost  fair- 
ness, the  actual  attitude  of  the  Greeks  towards  their  God 
and  his  under-gods.  Zeus  indeed,  the  god  of  light  and 
of  the  bright  firmament  vaulted  over  us,  is  also  (with  that 
smoothly  gliding  symbolism  so  innate  in  the  Greek  in- 
genium)  the  power  over  all.  It  is  he  who  plans  to  honor 


56  TESTIMONIUM  ANDkLE 

Achilles  and  bring  discomfiture  upon  Agamemnon  (II.,  1, 
523  *<?#.)•  Though  Poseidon  and  Hades  (II. ,15,  185)  are 
called  co-regents,  with  distinct  and  independent  spheres  of 
power,  still  Zeus  is  above  all.  When  or  how  this  physical 
dome  celestial  has  passed  into  personality,  we  are  entirely 
unconcerned.  Storms,  indeed,  rain  showers,  winds  retard- 
ing or  speeding  seafaring  men,  sudden  gales:  these  are  not 
so  much  the  work  of  Zeus — in  a  way  they  are  Zeus ;  they 
are,  what  men  perceive  of  him.  "  Zeus  rains"  (II.,  12,  25), 
he  "  started  a  gale  of  wind  from  the  Ida  range  "  (v.  252), 
he  starts  the  snowflakes  on  a  winter's  day,  nay, "  he  starts 
to  snow,"  the  rain  shower  is  his  (v.  286),  his  thunderbolt 
uproots  the  sturdy  oak  (14,  414).  A  congeries,  then,  of 
physical  forces  is  he,  and,  as  supplanting  his  father 
Kronos  (Time  breeds  and  devours  its  own  begetting, 
obviously),  Zeus  is  simply  the  cosmic  order  in  which  men 
actually  live.  Rarely  is  Zeus,  in  Homer,  conceived 
as  a  moral  force:  "  On  a  day  of  autumn  when  Zeus  pours 
down  water  profusely,  when  he  has  an  angry  grudge 
against  men  who  violently  on  the  market  give  crooked 
decisions  at  law  and  drive  out  justice,  having  no  concern 
for  the  vengeance  of  the  Gods"  (II.,  16,  385  «<?<?.)• 
Further,  Zeus  does  indeed  protect  strangers  (Zeus  Xenios) 
and  their  plaint  is  his  concern  (13,  625;  Od.,  6,  207;  7, 
180,  269;  13,  25;  213;  14,  283,  389).  He  too  ordains 
the  order  of  time:  hence  are  "sacred  day,"  "sacred 
darkness,"  "ambrosial  night,"  "seasons  of  Zeus."  The 
rivers  are  "Zeus-fallen,"  i.e.  (14,  434)  the  water  that 
replenishes  them  ultimately  comes  from  the  sky.  A 
physical  power  then,  order,  ordainer,  in  the  main  :  his 
will  is  ascertainable  through  te'rds  (wonder)  and  sema 
(sign)  (see  the  Homeric  Lexica). 

The  fatherhood  of  Zeus  is  of  practical  import  mainly  to 
the  aristocracy.  The  historical  retrospect  of  the  Greeks 
of  these  earlier  records  was  narrow.  Clearly  their  legends 
were  in  the  making,  when  the  southward  movement  down 
to  Malea,  when  the  displacing  and  dislodgment  of  Achae- 
ans  by  the  sterner  and  stronger  Dorians,  when  the  forcing 
of  the  lonians  across  the  JEgean  had  not  yet  been  con- 


GODS  AND  MEN  IN  HOMER  AND  HESIOD         57 

summated.  It  was  a  time  when  the  cone  of  Olympus  was 
of  a  truth  a  central  "  high  place,"  the  "  highest  place  "  the 
Hellenes  all  knew  or  knew  of.  Of  Zeus-derived  ancestry 
then  I  was  speaking:  an  undisputed  preeminence  of  he- 
roic leaders  was  best  maintained  with  such  claims  of  ances- 
try. The  Greeks,  I  say,  came  into  their  own  peninsula 
from  the  north,  and  still  in  every  vale  were  potent  living 
legends  —  potent  to  the  time  of  Hadrian  and  into  the  very 
eventide  of  the  Greek  pagan  world.  In  these  legends 
almost  uniformly  the  local  founder  is  presented  as  an  "  au- 
tochthon "  (springing  from  the  soil),  not  as  an  immigrant. 
This,  particularly,  was  the  proud  belief  of  the  leaders  of 
Greek  intelligence,  the  people  of  Attica  (although  they 
were  really  of  immigrant  stock  no  less  than  their  compa- 
triots) —  a  form  of  particularist  vanity  which  perpetually 
interfered  with  real  political  consolidation  of  this  excep- 
tionally gifted  nationality.  It  was  not  any  more  mirac- 
ulous then  to  cite  Zeus  as  an  ancestor,  Zeus,  under  whose 
specific  grace  and  inspiration  lay  kingship  and  all  talent  to 
rule  and  direct:  from  him  particularly  are  derived  fame 
and  honor  (II.,  17,  251). 

But  is  Zeus  himself  fully  and  absolutely  sovereign  ? 
He  indeed  moderates,  directs,  dispenses,  retards,  acceler- 
ates, in  one  word,  manages:  thus  only  is  the  plot  and  plan 
of  the  Wrath  of  Achilles  conceived  and  conceivable.  But 
"  Moira  "  (Fate,  i.e.  allotment,  portion,  share)  (more  rarely 
"  Aisa  ")  is  the  coordinate  power,  gloomy  and  oppressive. 

Vainly  thus  does  Zeus  bewail  the  impending  doom  of 
his  own  son  Sarpedon  (II.,  16,  433).  Whereat  his  spouse 
Hera  reminds  him  of  the  folly  of  this  concern :  does  not 
Sarpedon  belong  to  that  order  of  beings  to  whom  death  is 
fated  long  ago  ?  "  But  (v.  445)  if  thousendest  Sarpedon 
alive  to  his  home,  ponder  thou  lest  thereafter  many  a 
nobler  one  of  the  Gods  may  wish  to  send  his  own  beloved 
son  away  from  mighty  battle:  for  many  sons  of  the  Im- 
mortals are  warring  about  Priam's  great  city  whom  you 
will  inspire  with  direful  anger."  We  must  content  our- 
self  with  citing  the  eminent  student  of  these  and  kindred 
things,  Carl  Friedr,  Naegelsbach  ("  Homerische  Theologie," 


58  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

2d ed.,  1861,  p.  145):  "Homer's  conception  utterly  failed 
to  keep  apart  the  spheres  of  both  activities,  inasmuch  as 
it  sways  to  and  fro  between  distinguishing  and  amalga- 
mating the  will  of  the  deity  and  the  will  of  fate."  Zeus 
indeed  is  presented  as  holding  the  golden  scales  in  which 
repose  the  fates  of  death  —  as  he  listeth,  apparently,  caus- 
ing one  to  descend  (cf.  II.,  8,  69  sqq.;  11,  336;  12,402; 
19,  223;  22,  209,  etc.). 

And  so,  too,  the  Overgod  rules  over  and  overrules  his 
Olympian  household,  enjoining  (though  not  really  with 
success)  neutrality  upon  them  all:  he  alone  is  conceived 
as  being  a  match  and  more  for  them  all  (8,  210  sqq.). 

On  the  whole,  earthly  power  and  prosperity  is  merely 
another  name  for  the  favor  and  blessing  of  Zeus;  and  there 
is  not,  in  the  entire  range  of  Epic  poetry,  as  there  is  not 
in  the  noblest  strains  of  ^Eschylus,  any  inkling  whatever 
of  the  inscrutable  profundity  of  the  chief  verities  reposing 
in  the  Book  of  Job. 

The  Odyssey  has  been  aptly  compared  (by  an  ancient 
critic)  to  the  sun  in  his  lower  slanting  ra}rs,  after  the 
noon :  in  the  Odyssey  then  in  the  Book  of  the  Dead  (book 
11)  there  is  a  general  view  of  the  woe  of  Agamemnon  (v. 
436):  "Oh,  verily,  greatly,  and  with  uncommon  force 
did  Zeus  hate  the  race  of  Atreus,  on  account  of  woman's 
wiles  from  the  beginning;  for  many  of  us,  for  Helen's  sake, 
did  perish,"  etc. 

I  wrote  above  this  chapter  "Gods  and  Men."  In  the 
higher  sense  Zeus  towers  alone.  As  for  the  undergods 
they  are,  in  their  essence,  repositories  in  perfection  of  cer- 
tain powers  and  gifts  which  men  hold  and  have  from  them. 
From  Hera  are  matrimony  and  matrimonial  blessings,  and 
these  ever  repose  with  her.  Thus  she  favored  Jason  (Od. 
12,  72).  Again:  the  daughters  of  Pandareos  had  been 
left  orphans  (Od.,  20,  685  «<?<?•)•  Aphrodite  reared  them 
with  cheese  and  sweet  honey  and  pleasant  wine  (they  be- 
came fair  to  see).  Hera  endowed  them  above  all  women 
with  form  and  with  wisdom:  tall  stature  chaste  Artemis 
provided  them:  Athena  brought  them  to  work  famous 
works.  Apollo,  in  the  Iliad,  has  nothing  to  do  whatsoever 


GODS  AND  MEN  IN  HOMER  AND  HESIOD         59 

with  the  sun.  Helios  is  not  of  the  Olympians  at  all. 
When  the  crews  of  Odysseus  have  slain  the  steers  of 
Helios  (Od.,  12,  382)  the  latter  threatens  to  descend  into 
the  realm  of  Hades  and  shine  among  the  dead.  Upon 
which  the  sovereign  of  Olympus  promises  prompt  satisfac- 
tion. Apollo,  then,  is  as  yet  purely  the  archer  and  the  de- 
stroyer of  pests  (II.,  1,  39):  prophet  at  Delos  and  Delphi; 
giver  of  music,  personal  minister  of  Zeus.  Antiquarian 
speculation,  e.g.  as  to  how  the  symbolism  of  swift  death 
(e.g.  by  paralytic  stroke)  and  of  archery  blended  and 
united  in  this  personified  force,  concern  us  not  here.  We 
seek  merely  to  gain  a  closer  vision  of  the  actual  religious 
ideas  of  the  Greeks,  the  working  ideas. 

Where  a  mortal  is  distinguished  by  extraordinary  skill 
with  bow  and  arrow,  such  a  one  palpably  enjoys  exceptional 
grace  and  good  will  from  the  archer  god ;  and  he,  who 
conspicuously  fails  of  the  mark,  has  been  hampered  by  the 
same  Apollo  (8,  311) :  great  archers,  like  Eurytos  of 
Oichalia,  challenge  even  him,  with  dire  results  (Od.,  8, 226). 

These  forces,  then,  humanized  though  they  be,  have  but 
rarely  the  whole  range  of  human  joys,  sorrows,  and  sym- 
pathies. They  are  —  all  the  undergods  of  Zeus  —  limited 
forces,  living  on  from  generation  to  generation  of  men, 
but,  to  say  it  at  once  and  once  for  all,  they  are  not  good,  not 
essentially  good.  They  may  be  beneficent  or  they  may  not. 
Who  will  determine  their  mood  or  favor?  Their  foibles 
and  their  passions  are  merely  those  of  man,  actual,  average 
man.  During  the  Wrath  of  Achilles,  Hera  plans  to  with- 
draw her  sovereign  spouse  from  his  concern  for  mortals 
by  connubial  blandishments.  These  are  furnished  her  by 
Aphrodite,  the  goddess  of  sensual  beauty  and  sensual  love 
at  the  petition  of  the  Olympian  queen  (II.,  14, 198):  "give 
me  now  love  and  desire,  wherewith  thou  overcomest  all 
Immortals  and  mortal  men."  (Aphrodite)  "spoke  it  and 
from  her  bosom  she  loosened  the  zone  worked  with  the 
needle,  splendidly  composite,  where  all  her  blandishments 
were  wrought :  therein  resided  love,  therein  desire,  there 
whispering  persuasion  which  beguiles  the  minds  even 
of  those  who  think  shrewdly."  We  are  presenting  the 


60  TESTTMONIUM  ANBLE 

permanent  and  enduring  book  of  the  Grecian  world. 
On  this  book  the  literary  culture,  we  may  boldly 
say  the  universal  culture  of  Greek  youth,  was  grounded 
for  roughly  one  thousand  years  or  more.  What  a  sovereign 
God,  or  sovereign  of  gods  is  this  one  of  whom  the  singers 
chanted  further  (v.  294)  :  "  As  he  beheld  her,  so  desire 
darkened  his  shrewd  mind,"  etc.  No  effort  whatever  was 
here  made  to  etherize  or  to  symbolize.  The  affinity  which 
this  unvarnished  naturalness  always  had  for  all  those  who 
deceived  their  souls  of  "  pure,"  i.e.  unalloyed,  humanity  in 
Homer,  grist  on  their  particular  mill  (as  Rousseau,  Goethe, 
Byron)  is  quite  obvious.  Neither  Purity  nor  Humility 
nor  Mercy  have  a  seat  at  the  Olympian  board.  Zeus  him- 
self —  a  grotesque  lapse  of  psychological  concinnity  —  to 
his  lawful  spouse  recounts  the  rare  and  radiant  beings, 
mortal  or  immortal,  through  whom  mortal  heroes  traced 
paternity  to  him  (the  Alexandrine  critics  desired,  in 
their  higher  criticism,  to  set  these  verses  aside,  but  the 
lines  were  there  long  —  long  before  Aristarchus,  Zenodotus, 
and  the  rest  were  born)  :  the  spouse  of  Ixion,  mother  of  the 
valiant  Pirithoos,  Danae  of  Argos,  the  Phoanician  princess 
Europa  and  the  rest,  staple  of  much  of  Greek  art  and 
Greek  verse,  later  on.  And  so,  too,  the  warriors  before  Troy 
have  captive  women  for  concubines,  —  Briseis,  Chryseis, 
Tekmessa.  Agamemnon  himself  returns  to  royal  Mykenai 
as  an  ox  enters  the  shambles,  with  the  ill-fated  prophetess 
Kassandra,  his  unwilling  concubine.  The  unveiled  though 
ever  euphemistically  phrased  sensuality  of  Odysseus  and 
Kirke  or  Kalypso,  of  the  suitors  in  Ithaca  with  the  maids 
in  that  baronial  hall,  is  familiar  to  readers  of  Homer. 

Gladstone  (  "  Juventus  Mundi "  )  has  made  some  clever 
conjectures  explanatory  of  the  contemptuous  treatment 
dealt  to  Aphrodite  in  the  martial  Epic.  Did  this  par- 
ticular Personification  not,  in  time,  become  refined  or  en- 
nobled or  was  not  this  grossness  purged  away  ?  I  cannot 
see  it.  Thus  in  the  "  Homeric  "  "  Hymn  to  Aphrodite," 
Zeus  indeed  had  been  her  victim  :  easily  (v.  35  *qq.~)  she 
had  filled  him  with  passion  for  mortal  women.  But  now 
Zeus  turns  about  in  retribution,  filling  Aphrodite  with  love 


GODS  AND  MEN  IN  HOMER  AND  HESIOD         61 

for  a  comely  mortal  youth  — Anchises,  who  tends  the  sheep 
on  the  slopes  of  Ida.  The  sovereign  and  overpowering 
impulse  is  delineated  (149  sqq.)  :  This  impulse  will  I  fol- 
low, no  man  or  God  will  hold  me,  —  now,  this  moment: 
"  not  even  if  the  far-shooting  Apollo  himself  shall  send 
forth  his  groauful  missiles  from  his  silver  bow,"  etc.  And 
so,  too,  in  the  morality  of  the  earlier  Epic,  the  avowal  of 
concupiscence  is  made  with  absolute  frankness,  as,  e.g.,  of 
the  Suitors  of  Penelope  (Od.,  18,  212  sqq.}. 

But,  one  may  say,  is  not  Intelligence  highly  extolled? 
Is  not  Athena  the  second  figure  in  the  entire  Olympus  ? 
Is  she  not,  indeed,  rather  than  Hera,  really  the  foremost 
one  among  the  undergods  of  Zeus?  It  is  so.  And  so  too 
it  is  Odysseus,  rather  than  the  valiant  and  choleric  Ajax, 
who  is  the  veritable  microcosm  of  Greek  nationality  and 
the  embodiment  of  Hellenic  consciousness. 

If  one  examines  with  patient  care,  as  I  have  done, 
every  passage  concerned  with  Athena  in  the  two  Epics, 
one  realizes,  in  a  very  impressive  manner,  that  this  much- 
vaunted  deity  of  Intelligence  is  purely  a  force  of  shrewdness 
and  prudence  and  discretion  :  utterly  alien  to  goodness  or 
mercy,  inextricably  bound  up  with  profit  and  loss,  with 
success  and  with  the  avoidance  of  failure :  success  is  every- 
thing. The  delicate  symbolism  of  early  Greece  made  her 
leap  forward,  panoplied,  from  the  head  of  Zeus,  who  hears 
her  more  willingly  than  his  own  spouse.  So  bitter  is  she  in 
her  hatred  of  Troy,  that  she  even  seconds  Achilles  :  ignoble 
to  the  most  elementary  sense  of  chivalry  is  her  being  in 
at  the  death  (II.,  22,  276)  of  by  far  the  noblest  figure 
in  the  entire  Epic,  and  draining  deep  the  cup  of  revenge. 
In  the  roaming  adventures  of  the  wily  Ithacan  she  is,  so 
to  speak,  the  divine  correlative  of  her  favorite,  his  source 
of  strength,  his  unfathomable  resource.  When  at  last 
he  awakes  on  the  soil  of  his  native  isle,  there  enters  to 
him  his  tutelary  deity  in  the  garb  of  a  young  shepherd, 
whom  the  wily  wanderer  asks  what  the  name  of  the 
land  might  be.  And  to  hide  his  identity  he  proceeds 
to  tell  a  glib  but  mendacious  story*  about  himself  and 
how  he  came  there  (Od.,  13,  .220  *<?<?•)•  But  i*  *s 


62  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

this  very  trait  of  resourceful  lying  which  Athena  loves  and 
admires  in  him ;  she  is  fairly  carried  away  by  delight :  she 
changes  her  form  of  epiphany  (v.  282)  to  "  a  woman  fair 
and  large  and  knowing  shining  works  "  :  having  stroked 
him  with  her  hand  "  and  giving  voice  she  addressed  to 
him  winged  word :  Lucre-loving  must  he  be  and  crafty 
who  would  get  ahead  of  you  in  every  wile,  even  if  a  god 
should  meet  you.  Intolerable  one  !  Tortuous-minded, 
insatiable  of  wiles :  thou  then  wast  bound  not  to  cease 
from  thy  deceptions,  not  even  when  thou  wast  in  thine 
own,  and  from  crafty  tales  which  are  dear  to  thee  from  the 
ground  up.  But  come,  let  us  no  more  discourse  on  these 
things,  we  both  knowing  the  gainful  things,  since  thou  art 
by  far  the  best  of  all  mortals  in  counsel  and  tales  and  I 
among  all  gods  in  design  am  I  famed  and  gainful  conceits." 
And  as  he  still  perseveres  in  pretending  ignorance,  she 
bursts  forth  (v.  330)  :  "  Always  have  you  such  a  conceit 
in  your  heart :  therefore  also  I  cannot  forsake  you  when 
you  are  in  distress  because  you  are  glib  of  speech  and 
close-minded  and  prudent." 

In  a  word,  then,  these  "gods"  are  merely  narrow 
powers  and  impulses  of  man,  — "  laws,"  as  some  say, 
in  his  range  of  growth  and  being. 

Clearly,  then,  in  this  circumscribed  substance  and 
range  of  their  being  they  not  only  lack  all  moral  eleva- 
tion, nay,  they  are,  to  specify  closely,  alien  to  all  moral 
category  in  themselves.  Their  motives  in  action  are  pre- 
cisely as  good  or  as  bad  as  the  motives  of  the  natural  man 
are  apt  to  be.  Curious  Godhead  in  which  the  good  has  no 
share,  is  no  element;  puzzling  congeries  of  forces,  this 
Olympus. 


To  turn  to  the  darker  side,  then  :  they  are  lustful, 
and  adulterous  even,  as  in  the  ballad  of  Demodokos  con- 
cerning Ares  and  Aphrodite.  The  seducer  "  gave  much 
and  shamed  bed  and  couch  of  the  lord  Hephaistos " 
(Od.,  8,  269).  Helios  told  the  wronged  husband  who 
later  trapped  the  guilty  pair.  But  why  go  farther? 


GODS  AND  MEN  IN  HOMER  AND  HESIOD         63 

Here  is  revealed  the  current  morality  of  the  aristocracy 
of  the  ^Egean  Sea,  to  whom  such  adventure  and  intrigue 
were,  in  the  main,  amusing :  "unquenchable  laughter  arose 
among  the  blissful  gods,  as  they  looked  upon  the  devices 
of  the  shrewd  Hephaistos  "(v.  326  sq.) :  amusing,  this  scan- 
dal in  "  high  life,"  how  the  slow  one  caught  the  swift  one. 

There  were  critics,  higher  or  otherwise,  in  antiquity, 
who  would  consider  this  an  "interpolation."  This  is  no 
longer  believed  :  the  modern  absurdity  (J.wm,  e.g.*)  is  to 
differentiate  "  the  gods  of  the  cult  from  the  gods  of 
comedy."  No,  this  ballad  fits  the  essence  of  both  fig- 
ments with  perfect  aptness.  "  Evolution,"  that  divine 
maid  of  all  work  of  the  zoological  philosophy,  did  not 
at  all  somehow  operate  here  with  academic  propriety. 
But  why  be  so  squeamish  about  a  "  divinity  "  worshipped 
by  Greek  prostitutes  and  courtesans  everywhere,  e.g.  at 
Corinth?  If  she  be  a  divinity,  then  the  legend  sung  by 
Demodokos  is  divine  enough. 

But  I  say,  and  must  say  for  them,  many  Greek  teach- 
ers and  scholars  (v.  Dindorf's  "  Scholia,"  Oxford,  1855) 
were  annoyed  or  distressed.  Some  said  that  Homer  in- 
serted this  story  to  make  his  hearers  sober  and  sane :  it 
was  really  a  deterrent  example.  Allegorical  interpreta- 
tions also  were  resorted  to — Beauty  associated  with  fire 
and  with  iron  to  produce  works  of  art ;  others  dragged 
in,  absurdly  enough,  the  tenets  of  Empedocles  of  Agri- 
gentum  (fl.  444  B.C.).  For  as  Homer  more  and  more 
became  the  canonic  book  of  Greek  education,  the  teach- 
ing profession  strained  its  ingenuity  in  such  futilities. 
But  even  if  such  refining  and  purging  exegesis  (for  which 
there  is  no  scintilla  of  evidence)  had  dominated  the 
Greek  world,  still  we  must  remember  that  the  local  le- 
gends (as  they  appear  to  us  in  Pausanias,  in  the  even- 
tide of  Greek  paganism)  had  a  vitality  as  tenacious  as 
the  recurrent  seasons,  exceeding  all  eruditional  crusts  set- 
tled on  the  national  Epic.  In  these  legends  the  forcing 
of  beautiful  mortal  women  by  some  of  the  "gods  "  is  not 
rare.  The  following  may  be  cited  (Apollodorus's  "Bibli- 
otheca  ")  :  Apollo  enamoured  of  Hyacinth ;  Thamyris  and 


64  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

his  unspeakable  wager  with  the  Muses;  Poseidon,  from 
anger,  causes  the  bestial  love  of  Queen  Pasiphae ;  He- 
phaistos  tries  to  force  Athena  even.  Aphrodite  caused 
Smyrnar  who  had  not  honored  her,  to  couch  with  her 
own  father.  But  why  go  on? 

The  academic  lie  of  drawing  "  culture  "  from  everything 
Greek  ought  to  cease,  the  sooner  the  better  :  the  histori- 
cal perspective  of  classical  antiquity  being  the  only  true 
and  wholesome  one,  and  tenable  one  too,  which  is  to  be 
well  considered  by  all  concerned. 

Graver  still  is  the  legend  of  Ganymede,  of  the  Trojan 
aristocracy  (II. ,  202,  32),  "  who  was  the  fairest  of  mortal 
men,  whom  too  the  gods  snatched  away  on  high  to  be 
cupbearer  on  account  of  his  beauty,  that  he  might  dwell 
with  the  immortals."  To  call  the  fair  divine,  Winckel- 
mann  and  the  other  sesthetical  hierophants  would  say: 
it  is  very  well  said,  very  fine.  Unfortunately  soberer 
thinkers  than  these  and  better  judges  of  Greekdom 
speak  differently;  mask  and  justification  was  Ganymede 
for  the  most  unspeakable  form  of  lust ;  thus  the  legend 
was  particularly  elaborated  in  Crete  and  Euboea,  where 
this  vice  was  particularly  endemic.  The  greatest  disciple 
of  Socrates,  Plato,  wrote  in  the  work  of  his  old  age,  the 
"Laws,"  I,  636,  C:  "We,  all  of  us"  (all  Greece),  "  charge 
upon  the  Cretans  the  legend  concerning  Ganymede,  (al- 
leging) that  they  invented  the  story,  since  it  was  the 
settled  belief  with  them  that  their  laws  had  come  from 
Zeus,  and  that  they  superimposed  this  legend  directed  at 
Zeus,  in  order  that,  following  the  god,  they  may  reap  this 
pleasure  also."  If  then  we  say  the  Iliad  passage  is  merely 
(very  convenient  adverb)  the  apotheosis  of  beauty,  it 
certainly  did  not  long  remain  so.  For,  after  Plato's 
clear  condemnation  the  ogling  article  in  Roscher's  Lexi- 
con, with  its  moral  obtuseness,  is  doubly  vapid.  Again 
we  ask  :  where  is  thy  Altiora  Peto,  thou  Evolutionist 
believer  ?  For  history  here  records  but  decadence  and 
decay.  But  leaving  this  to  the  coming  herbaria  of  Time, 
we  proceed.  Man  deifies  that  which  he  would  justify  in 
himself.  Justify  the  law  in  the  members,  I  take  it.  Thus 


GODS  AND  MEN  IN  HOMER  AND  HESIOD         65 

too  the  youth  in  a  Menandrian  play  of  that  decadent  Attic 
society  (Menander  flourished  ab.  300  B.C.)  latinized  in  the 
"  Eunuchus  "  of  Terence :  "  there  was  this  painting,  i.e.  the 
fashion  in  which  they  say  Jove  sent  a  golden  rain  into 
the  lap  of  Danae.  I  also  began  to  view  it,  and  because 
he  (Jove)  had  played  quite  a  similar  game  even  of  yore, 
my  spirit  rejoiced  more  greatly  that  a  god  changed  him- 
self into  a  man  and  came  upon  another  man's  tiles  through 
rain  for  the  purpose  of  fooling  a  woman.  But  what  a 
god !  who  shakes  the  tops  of  temples  with  the  crash  of 
the  heavens.  I,  little  human  being  that  I  am,  should  not 
do  it?  Indeed  I  should,  and  freely,  too." 

Thus  the  gods  are  mirrors  of  human  lust.  But  they 
are  also  jealous  and  revengeful.  Artemis  sent  the 
Kalydonian  boar,  because  King  Oineus  in  ^Etolia  had 
not  included  her  in  the  sacrifices  of  the  harvest  (II.,  9, 
534).  The  following  are  in  the  collection  of  Apollodorus: 
Apollo  flayed  Marsyas  for  challenging  him  in  Music; 
Hera  flung  Side  into  Hades  for  vying  with  her  as  to 
beauty  of  form.  Phineus  was  blinded  by  the  gods 
because  he  foretold  the  future  to  mankind.  Zeus 
blinds  the  healer  Asklepios  because  he  fears  men  may 
make  too  much  headway  against  death  and  disease. 
Such  were  the  gods  made  by  the  Hellenes  for  them- 
selves. What  then  was  the  worship  of  sacrifice  and 
prayer  ? 

The  Homeric  men  "  raise  up  their  hands  "  when  they 
pray  (II.,  5,  174;  6,  257  «<?<?.)>  *°  Zeus  in  the  main:  gen- 
erally when  they  desire  some  specific  advantage  or  suc- 
cess :  before  speeding  an  arrow,  to  stay  flight,  to  grant 
retribution  :  often  they  pray  for  a  sign  whether  they  shall 
venture  upon  an  enterprise  or  not :  he  hears  them  by 
sending  his  eagle  (II.,  24,  301),  cf.  Od.,  3,  173  ;  or  Od., 
20,  98  (thunder  follows).  The  reader  may  find  abundant 
data  in  the  books  of  antiquarians  such  as  Schoemann. 
Two  things  may  be  noted  :  one  is  the  symbolism  of 
cleansing  before  prayer.  Deep  is  the  feeling,  I  am  sure, 
that  sin  makes  the  praying  person  unworthy.  So  II.,  9, 


66  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

172  :  "  bring  water  for  our  hands  and  bid  all  hush,  that 
we  may  pray  to  Zeus,  if  he  will  have  pity,"  etc.  So  also 
Telemachos  on  the  beach  (Od.,  2,  262),  "having  washed 
his  hands  in  the  gray  sea  water,  prayed  to  Athena,"  etc. 
Or  Achilles,  in  a  famous  passage  (II.,  16,  225  *<?<?.)  hav- 
ing made  libation  from  the  cup  which  he  used  for  Zeus 
alone  :  "  he  washed  his  hands,  and  dipped  from  sparkling 
wine  :  and  then  he  prayed,  having  taken  his  stand  in  the 
middle  of  the  enclosure  and  poured  out  wine,  looking  up 
into  the  sky  :  O  lord  Zeus  of  Dodona,  dwelling  far  away 
ruling  over  frosty  Dodona.  .  .  ."  "  You  heard  me  in  the 
past,  now  crown  with  success  my  plan  of  sending  out 
Patroklos,"  etc.  Often  the  praying  one  reminds  Zeus 
(and  this  is  another  point)  of  the  sacrifices  which  he  has 
made  to  him  in  the  past  (II.,  15,  272).  And  indeed  the 
function  of  priests  largely  resolves  itself  into  an  interpre- 
tation of  a  teras  or  a  suggestion  as  to  the  proper  mode  of 
removing  obstacles,  e.g.  the  adverse  winds  at  Aulis:  how 
to  placate,  soothe,  or  propitiate.  The  symbolism  of  "  clean 
hands  "  was  not  utterly  unmeaning.  For  while  Odysseus 
thanks  Athena  (II.,  10,  280)  for  accomplishing  the  massa- 
cre at  night  of  many  sleeping  victims,  in  their  tent  — 
on  the  other  hand  the  murder  of  a  guest  is  heinous  :  the 
murderer  cannot  pray  to  Zeus  :  cf.  Od.,  14,  406.  (Eu- 
maios  the  swineherd  to  Odysseus  disguised  as  a  beggar.) 
In  the  main,  however,  the  gods  are  convenient  forces 
who  may  help  or  mar,  bless  or  destroy:  Fear  seems  to  be 
at  the  base  of  it  all. 

As  for  oaths,  that  by  Styx  (trickling  Shudder-brook) 
has  often  been  discussed.  This,  the  symbol  of  cold  death, 
is  awful  to  the  gods  themselves  :  for  the  Olympians  are 
the  very  personifications  of  life,  pleasure,  vigor  :  their 
immortality  is  curiously  vague  and  often  quasi-contin- 
gent (II.,  14,  271  sqq. ;  15,  36),  for  they  are  abiding, 
but  sinful  and  morally  weak  themselves,  and  cannot 
dispense  with  periodical  consumption  of  ambrosia,  the 
very  stuff  of  immortality.  One  appeal,  too,  I  observe  in 
the  war-epic  to  those  powers  that  inflict  retribution 
in  an  existence  consequent  upon  this  life  (II., 


GODS  AND  MEN  IN  HOMER  AND  HESIOD         67 

8,  276  *5'9'.):  "Father  Zeus,  —  and  Sun  who  seest  upon 
all  things  and  overhearest  all  things,  and  Rivers  and 
Earth  and  Ye  two  who  even  below  inflict  retribution  upon 
those  who  have  toiled "  (above)  :  "  he  teaches,"  says  an 
ancient  Scholiast,  "that  even  after  death  those  who  do 
wrong  are  not  relieved." 

While  the  sacrifice  may  seem  to  be  a  more  substantial 
form  of  propitiation  than  prayer,  the  finest  portions  serve 
as  a  banquet  for  the  worshippers,  and  the  gods  must  be 
content  with  the  savor  of  suet  and  thigh  bones.  Every- 
where the  soul  of  the  Greeks  sought  satisfaction  in  symbols 
or  symbolic  fitness  of  certain  specific  forms,  as  a  heifer  to 
Virgin  Athena,  a  black  ewe  lamb  for  Earth,  a  white  one 
for  the  Sun  :  matrons  to  bring  a  peplon  (or  a  draping 
garment)  to  Athena.  Sacrifices  are,  outright,  called  the 
proper  way  of  desiring  to  accomplish  a  worldly  aim  — 
as  in  II.,  8,  238.  Here  Agamemnon  declares  that  on  his 
way  to  Troy  he  never  passed  by  any  altar  of  Zeus  "  but 
at  all  burned  fat  of  oxen  and  thigh  bones,  desiring  to 
destroy  the  well- walled  city  of  Troy."  And  an  answer 
came,  too  :  an  eagle  came  and  dropped  a  fawn  at  the  altar 
of  Zeus  Pan-omphaios  (of  every  omen).  This  is  striking : 
not  righteous  living,  but  a  multitude  of  sacrifices  invests 
the  worshipper  with  a  merit,  which  the  gods  cannot  fairly 
fail  to  recompense  :  so  when  Hector  perishes,  Apollo  calls 
his  fellow-Olympians  cruel  and  destructive  (II.,  24,  33) 
for  not  requiting  the  many  gifts  of  honor,  i.e.  ascending 
savor  and  libation.  The  sinner,  too,  fully  aware  of  the 
moral  wrong  of  his  conduct,  actually  rewards  the  gods 
for  the  successful  accomplishing  of  his  designs.  Thus 
Aigisthos,  the  paramour  of  the  queen  Klytaimnestra 
(Od.,  3,  273)  :  "  many  sacrifices  he  made  to  the  gods,  and 
many  precious  gifts  (textile  fabrics  and  gold)  he  hung  up" 
(i.e.  when  at  last  he  had  accomplished  the  seduction  of 
Klytaimnestra)  "  having  accomplished  the  great  feat, 
which  he  had  never  dared  to  hope  in  his  mind." 

Sometimes  indeed  more  than  those  slender  symbols  of 
suet  and  thigh  bones  are  given  up  :  as  when  the  swine- 
herd Eumaios  (Od.,  14,  419)  acts  as  priest  (Aparelie  is 


68  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

the  beginning,  initial  portion  :  also  called  argma :  clearly 
the  gods  are  conceived  as  the  honored  guests  to  share  the 
cheer  of  men,  to  share  the  best  they  have).  But  Eu- 
maios  goes  farther :  when  the  roast  was  on  the  table  he 
made  seven  portions  :  one  for  the  nymphs  and  Hermes, 
the  other  six  for  those  present. 

Autolykos,  the  maternal  grandfather  of  Odysseus,  was 
distinguished  among  men  "by  cunning  and  oath  "  (i.e.  he 
was  "smart"  as  the  New  England  farmer  says).  Why? 
God  Hermes  bestowed  this  upon  him,  for  he  was  wont  to 
burn  for  him  pleasing  thigh  bones  of  lambs  and  kids. 


The  essential  sameness  of  gods  and  men  (apart  from  im- 
mortality and  an  irrevocable  title  to  happiness)  is  the  re- 
sult of  this  partial  interpretation  of  salient  and  recurrent 
data.  But  the  advancing  of  mere  men  to  that  divinity  of 
the  heros,  sharing  with  the  older  Olympians  and  often  re- 
ceiving greater  worship  than  they,  —  this  striking  feature 
of  Greek  religion,  the  apotheosis  of  our  own  kind,  has  not 
yet  been  established  at  the  time  when  the  great  epics 
were  consummated.  In  the  Iliad  at  least  Kastor  and 
Polydeukes  (Pollux),  the  brothers  of  Helen,  are  merely 
underground,  are  merely  dead  and  gone,  like  other  mor- 
tals, valiant  though  they  be  (II.,  3,  243).  But  even  Hera- 
cles (Hera-klei,  renowned  through  Hera's  rancor  against 
him)  is  merely  mortal  and  has  died  in  the  common  way. 
Indeed  he  is  described  as  "awful,  worker  of  enormous 
feats,  who  has  no  remorse  in  doing  wicked  things,  who  with 
his  archery  inflicted  hurt  on  the  gods  who  inhabited  Olym- 
pos  "  (i.e.  on  Hera),  often  miraculously  succored  by  Zeus 
(II.,  8,  362),  cause  of  violent  quarrels  in  the  Olympian 
household  (15,  18)  :  but  he  too  had  to  die.  "  For  not 
even  the  mighty  brawn  of  Hercules  escaped  Fate  (TT^r), 
Hercules  who  was  dearest  to  Zeus  the  lord,  son  of  Kronos ; 
but  him  the  Moira  subdued  and  the  heavy  anger  of  Hera  " 
(18,  118).  No  trace  then  as  yet  in  the  older  Epic  of  the 
worship  of  mighty  men.  As  for  the  Odyssey  (8,  223), 
Hercules  is  rated  with  the  mightiest  archers  of  old  who 


GODS  AND  MEN  IN  HOMER  AND  HESIOD         69 

dared  to  vie  with  the  Gods  themselves :  nay,  he  wickedly 
slew  his  own  guest  (21,  25  »<?<?.)• 

In  the  Book  of  the  Dead  (Od.,  11,  601  sqq.')  his  image 
only  (eidolon)  dwells  among  the  shades,  "  but  he  himself 
among  the  immortal  gods  rejoices  in  the  feasts  and  has 
for  wife  the  fair-ankled  Hebe."  Critics  agree  that  this  is 
a  later  insertion  into  the  younger  Epic.  Life,  strength, 
stout  valor,  feasting,  satisfying  to  the  full  every  appetite 
or  impulse,  —  these  are  the  ideals  that  gleam  over  the  sur- 
face of  the  Homeric  world.  Death,  however,  reigns  in  the 
Odyssey,  book  11.  In  the  gloomy  farthest  westland  is  that 
abode,  on  the  current  of  Okeanos :  the  sun  never  shines  on 
it.  A  momentary  reanimation  is  granted  to  such  only  who 
are  permitted  to  lap  of  the  elements  of  mortals'  sustenance, 
sheeps'  blood,  with  wine,  honey,  and  flour.  They  are 
called,  but  the  real  prayers  are  directed  to  Hades  and  Per- 
sephone. To  weep  for  the  dead  and  to  bury  them  is  di- 
vinely enjoined  upon  the  living.  It  is  a  "joyless  abode" 
(v.  94).  The  fire  has  destroyed  flesh  and  blood,  but  the 
soul  like  a  dream  flew  away  and  is  flitting.  Significant 
are  the  names  of  the  infernal  rivers :  Acheron  (Lamenta- 
tion), Kokytos  (piercing  wailing),  Pyriphlegethon  (burn- 
ing with  fire),  and  the  trickling  water  of  the  Styx  (Shud- 
dering) (Od.,  10,  513  «<?<?•)•  Of  all  the  idola  in  that 
nether  abode,  that  of  Teiresias  alone  remains  wise,  the 
others  flit  as  shadows.  There  is  not  even  the  bliss  of 
Lethe — "the  other  souls  of  the  dead  stood  grieving,  and 
each  told  her  several  woes"  (v.  541). 

Passing  by  the  familiar  figures  of  Tityos,  Tantalos,  Sisy- 
phos,  we  take  leave  of  this  world  of  grief,  gloom,  and  shades 
with  the  significant  utterance  of  the  mighty  Achilles 
(487) :  "  don't  recommend  death  to  me ;  I  should  prefer  in 
the  fields  to  be  a  day  laborer  for  another,  with  a  man  who 
has  no  land-lot  of  his  own,  who  has  not  much  of  a  living, 
rather  than  rule  over  all  the  dead." 


Apart  from  some  regard  for  the  stranger  who  is  within 
the  gates,  I  would  be  greatly  puzzled  to  name  some  one 


70  TESTIMOXIUM  ANBLE 

specific  point  where  this  "  religion  "  furnishes — or  consti- 
tutes—  a  rule  of  conduct.  On  the  whole  it  is  a  futile  re- 
ligion. For  that  other  category,  an  "  sesthetical  religion  " 
of  Walter  Pater  et  id  omne  genus,  that  too  is  a  futility, 
albeit  an  academic  one.  For  the  wrath  of  Achilles,  the 
pride  and  anger  of  Agamemnon  certainly  were  to  blame. 
When,  however,  at  last  there  is  accomplished  a  reconcili- 
ation between  these  two,  the  guilty  king  very  solemnly 
declines  to  shoulder  the  responsibility  for  the  evil  he  has 
caused  (II.,  19,  86):  "  but  I  am  not  to  blame;  Zeus  and 
Moira  and  Erinys  who  strides  in  darkness,  who  in  the 
assembly  put  in  my  mind  fierce  Ate."  The  Odyssey  in- 
deed ends  with  the  reunion  of  the  heroic  and  cunning 
wanderer  with  his  spouse,  rare  Penelope,  honor  of  women. 
Still  all  is  accomplished  amid  unspeakable  carnage,  far  be- 
yond just  retribution.  Sombre  are  the  words  of  that  lady 
when  at  last  she  receives  the  wanderer  (Od.,  23, 209) :  "  Be 
not  angry  with  me,  Odysseus,  since  in  other  respects  thou 
art  wise  among  men :  it  was  the  Gods,  who  bestowed  mis- 
ery upon  us,  who  begrudged  it  to  us  to  remain  together 
and  so  enjoy  our  youth  and  come  to  the  threshold  of  age." 
As  for  Helen,  she  would  not  have  broken  her  marriage 
vows,  if  she  had  known  the  consequences.  "  Her  a  god 
stirred  to  do  the  unseemly  deed,  and  the  Ate  she  did  not 
in  advance  place  in  her  soul,  grievous  Ate,  from  which 
first  sorrow  came  to  us  too." 

Truly,  then,  men,  even  the  foremost  in  station  and  most 
gifted  in  powers,  are  "  wretched  "  (deiloi)  :  this  is  their  es- 
sential nature  as  over  against  the  blissful  gods  (Naegels- 
bach,  p.  375).  Men  thus  are  nothing.  Nowhere  are  they 
(in  these  Epics)  rated  typically,  by  noble  will,  by  conscien- 
tious conduct,  least  of  all  by  immortal  soul.  Thus  the 
archer-god  to  the  sea-god  (II. ,  21,  464) :  "  Earthshaker, 
you  could  not  call  me  sane,  if  indeed  I  were  to  wage  war 
on  you  for  the  sake  of  mortal  men,  wretched  ones,  who, 
resembling  leaves — sometimes  are  very  fiery,  while  eating 
the  fruit  of  the  field:  at  another  time  they  waste  away 
without  heart."  Or,  as  Glaukos  the  Trojan  says  to  Dio- 
rnede  (II.,  6,  146) :  "  just  as  is  the  generation  of  leaves, 


GODS  AND  MEN  IN  HOMER  AND  HESIOD         71 

such  also  is  that  of  man.  The  leaves,  in  part,  the  wind 
tosses  upon  the  ground,  but  others  does  the  forest  produce 
when  it  quickens  the  blossoms  and  the  season  of  Spring 
comes  along  —  thus  the  generation  of  men  both  grows  and 
terminates."  When  men  are  done  living  they  are  done 
toiling  also,  done  laboring,  suffering  ;  hence  the  dead  are 
named  "they  who  toiled  once"  (kamtintes,  II.,  23,  72). 
Where  then  is  the  much  vaunted  vernal  gleam  of  Homeric 
humanity  ?  Fear  on  the  part  of  man ;  jealousy,  indiffer- 
ence, or  arbitrary  whim  on  the  part  of  the  gods :  this,  in 
essence,  is  the  Homeric  conception.  As  Achilles,  the  slayer 
of  Hector,  speaks  to  suppliant  Priam  (II.,  24,  525):  "For 
thus  the  gods  have  allotted  the  thread  to  wretched  mortals: 
to  live  with  lamentation  ;  but  they  themselves  are  without 
troublous  concern."  (We  will  think  of  these  grave  words 
later  on,  again,  when  we  have  come  to  JEschylus  and  to 
Herodotus.) 

The  soul  of  man  with  the  experience  of  the  billions  of 
his  kind  before  him,  ever  before  him,  will,  somehow,  look 
upon  death  as  a  gloomy  mystery.  Why  not  cheerfully  sub- 
side into  this  ocean  of  periodic  coming  and  going  ?  Why 
should  men,  in  the  face  of  this  uniform  and  overwhelm- 
ing experience,  call  themselves  Brotds,  Brotoi  ?  This  word 
really  means,  as  the  best  etymologists  (e.g.  Vanicek)  ex- 
plain it :  obsessed  by  fate,  by  death,  in  fact  mortal;  whereas 
ambrosia,  conversely,  is  the  food  of  immortal  life.  But 
the  voice  of  the  Latin  world  strongly  enough  confirms  this 
wail ;  for  homo  is  from  humus;  man  is  of  clay  veritably  ; 
but  he  alone  in  the  wide  domain  of  organic  life  is  conscious 
of  his  limitation,  it  is  from  this  gloom  of  vision  that  he 
designates  his  own  kind. 


Many  pages  could  be  filled  with  transcriptions  from 
Greek  thinkers,  bitterly  rejecting  or  censuring  the  Ho- 
meric Olympus.  A  few  must  suffice.  Of  Pythagoras : 
"They  say  that  he  (P.)  having  descended  to  Hades  saw 
the  soul  of  Hesiod  bound  to  a  brazen  pillar  and  screeching, 
and  that  of  Homer  suspended  from  a  tree  and  serpents 


72  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

about  him — in  return  for  what  they  said  about  the  gods  " 
(Suidas).  Xenophanes  of  Kolophon,  poet,  thinker,  rhap- 
sode of  his  own  verse  (fl.  ab.  540  B.C.):  "But  mortals 
think  that  gods  are  born,  and  have  their  own  faculty  of 
perception  {i.e.  men's)  and  voice  and  shape."  "All  those 
things  did  Homer  and  Hesiod  assign  to  the  gods,  whatever 
among  men  is  opprobrious  and  censurable ;  to  steal,  to  com- 
mit adultery,  and  to  deceive  one  another."  "  But,  indeed,  if 
cattle  or  lions  had  hands,  either  to  paint  with  hands  or  to 
accomplish  the  precise  works  which  men  do,  steeds  would 
design  images  resembling  steeds,  and  the  cattle  like  unto 
cattle,  and  they  would  make  bodies  resembling  precisely 
the  form  which  they  themselves  had"  (Mullach,  "Frag- 
menta  Philosophorum  Graecorum,"  1883,  Vol.  1,  pp.  101- 
102).  Plato  repeatedly  reverts  to  Homeric  religion  and 
its  intrinsic  conflict  with  pure  morality  or  with  any  re- 
fined conception  of  the  gods  {e.g.  in  his  "  Republic,"  2, 
p.  379,  c). 

Clearly  he  charges  Homer  with  the  current  religion  of 
actual  Greece  in  his  own  day.  Of  this  we  may  append 
an  illustration  or  specific  example  :  "  The  wandering  beg- 
gar-priests" ("Republic,"  2,  364,  b)  going  to  the  doors  of 
the  rich  persuade  them  that  there  is  in  their  own  posses- 
sion a  power  provided  by  the  gods,  by  means  of  sacrifices 
and  incantations,  whether  a  sin  has  come  from  himself  or 
his  ancestors,  to  heal  it  with  pleasures  or  feasts  and,  if  he 
wishes  to  inflict  any  injury  upon  an  enemy,  with  small 
expenditure,  to  injure  the  just  or  the  unjust."  The  cleav- 
age here  observable  grew  deeper  in  time.  In  vain  did  the 
Stoics  endeavor  to  make  Stoics  out  of  Homer  and  Hesiod, 
viz.,  by  allegorical  interpretation  (Cicero,  "De  Natura 
Deorum,"  I,  41).  But  the  people  at  large  clearly  were 
unconcerned  as  to  the  assent  or  dissent  of  these  illuminati, 
and  went  on  in  these  conceptions  and  in  this  religion. 


Hesiod,  the  son  of  a  Greek  immigrant  from  JEolic 
Asia  Minor,  is  a  very  distinct  personality,  moving  about 
among  the  farmer  folk  and  shepherds  of  Bceotia.  It  is 


GODS  AND  MEN  IN  HOMER  AND  HESIOD         73 

day  there,  but  a  humdrum  day  and  a  hard-working  world 
of  peace  and  small  things. 

The  Homeric  epics  are  essentially  made  and  consum- 
mated before  his  day.  Hesiod  deliberately  strove  to  sys- 
tematize the  religion  of  Homer  and  that  world.  Likewise 
he  strove  for  some  refinement  of  the  morality  of  Zeus  and 
his  court.  Not  very  effectively.  For  as  he  told  the  tale 
also  of  the  rare  and  radiant  local  heroines,  he  could  not 
do  aught  but  iterate  the  amatory  passions  of  the  god  of 
light. 

Hesiod  was  indefatigable  as  a  nomenclator.  But  I  deem 
it  wasted  labor  to  tread  after  scholars  like  Schoemann  and 
turn  over  his  muse-names,  his  names  of  the  fifty  daughters 
of  Nereus  the  Seagod;  the  luxuriant  faculty  of  the  Greek 
tongue  is  charmingly  revealed  (Theogony,  240  «<?<?.);  or 
again,  in  the  enumeration  of  the  daughters  of  Okeanos, 
346  sqq.,  beating  very  thin  the  poetical  gold  of  popular 
tradition. 

Thus  the  vapory  mists  were  fixed  as  on  a  drop  curtain, 
fixed,  I  say,  but  as  unsubstantial  as  such  a  painting :  the 
recurrent  life  and  order  of  this  nature  teeming  with  fig- 
ures. But  Hesiod  dovetails  into  this  fabric  a  whole  world 
also  of  human  concerns  and  human  woes  and  human  expe- 
rience. How  readily  and  smoothly  does  he  append  to  his 
primeval  Night  the  kindred  abstractions  of  Fate  and  of 
Death,  of  Sleep  and  Dreams,  and  of  Discord,  of  Toil,  of 
Hunger,  of  Griefs  ("Theog.,"  211  «^.). 

Clearly  the  farmer  and  the  shepherd  has  been  badly 
treated  by  his  brother  Perses,  who  has  bribed  the 
"  Kings,"  the  local  aristocracy  who  had  jurisdiction.  The 
poorly  rewarded  toil  of  his  lot,  and  a  bitter  and  pessimis- 
tic view  of  women,  particularly,  are  salient  features  in  his 
"Works  and  Days." 

He  transmits  to  us  the  popular  legend  of  Prometheus, 
and  of  the  steady  decadence  in  the  successive  generations 
of  men.  The  familiar  descent  from  the  Golden  Age  to  the 
present,  the  wretched  Iron  Age,  is  related  ("  Works  and 
Days,"  109  «^.).  (That  "  Golden  Age  "  differs  not  much 
from  Homer's  description  of  the  Phseacians,  their  life 


74  TESTIMONIUM  ANIMUS 

and  their  land.)  It  was  under  Kronos,  in  a  cosmic  order 
preceding  that  which  we  know.  "  Like  gods  they  lived, 
having  a  spirit  void  of  grief,  without  toils  and  lamenta- 
tions ;  nor  was  wretched  old  age  associated  with  them, 
but  always  like  as  to  feet  and  hands  they  lived  a  life  of 
enjoyment  in  banquets,  beyond  the  reach  of  all  evils ;  and 
they  would  die  as  overcome  by  sleep ;  all  fine  things  had 
they ;  fruit  bore  the  wheat-giving  land  of  itself  plenteous 
and  abundant  .  .  ."  and  so  forth,  in  a  gloomier  and 
gloomier  decrescendo.  We  notice  further,  how  Hesiod 
furnishes  forth  and  provides  a  world  of  spirits  and  of 
intermediate  beings,  from  the  spirits  of  these  more  blessed 
earth  dwellers  of  old  :  spirits  "  on  earth,  guardians  of  mor- 
tal men,  givers  of  wealth."  This  crude  first  philosophy 
of  history  is,  however,  inconsistent  in  one  point :  a  race  of 
mighty  men  of  war  (temporarily)  checked  (as  they  lived 
and  fought)  this  otherwise  irresistible  decline. 

"  The  divine  race  of  heroes  who  are  called  half -gods,  a 
former  race  on  the  unlimited  earth;  "  those  who  fought 
against  Thebes,  those  who  made  war  on  Troy.  And  these 
have  their  particular  reward  :  they  dwell,  without  any 
care  or  sorrow,  on  the  Isles  of  the  Blessed  (W.  and  D.,  v. 
171),  along  the  deep-whirling  Okeanos,  "  rich  heroes,  to 
whom  pleasant  fruit  blossoming  three  times  in  the  year 
bears  the  grain-giving  field."  Let  us  observe  all  this  a 
little  more  closely.  Simple  and  childlike  is  this  belief : 
that  the  mighty  men  of  war  have  assigned  them  a  para- 
dise. Why?  Because  all  Greeks  are  proud  of  them.  And 
the  gods  are  essentially  national;  they  are  all-powerful, 
but  they  reward  Greek  heroes  for  being  heroes,  primarily 
for  being  Greek  heroes.  This  is  the  beginning  of  Greek 
hero-worship.  The  moral  puzzle  remains  how  gods  were 
held  as  gods  whose  favor  and  sway  was  after  all  so  cir- 
cumscribed, whose  concerns  were  so  limited.  And  this 
admission  of  men-made  gods  and  nation-made  deities  did 
not  at  all  lead  them  to  doubt  or  distrust. 

Religion  was  essentially  national  or  ethnical,  and  the 
notion  of  a  revelation  or  of  a  deeper  authority  or  guar- 
antee troubled  them  not.  The  fact  that  they,  the  Greeks, 


GODS  AND  MEN  IN  HOMER  AND  HESIOD         75 

lived  and  flourished  was  to  them  intrinsically  a  living 
guarantee,  stronger  than  any  academic  demonstration  or 
philosophical  proof.  And  when  they  saw,  later  on,  the 
religion  of  other  nations,  as  when  Herodotus,  e.g.,  trav- 
elled in  Egypt,  they  had  no  doubt  of  a  national  correla- 
tion of  the  divinities  of  the  Nile,  a  correlation  to  the 
Egyptian  nation  in  no  wise  less  genuine,  actual,  and 
effective,  than  the  Hellenic  Olympus  held  for  the  Hel- 
lenic nation. 

There  is  not  the  faintest  trace  of  a  desire  to  win  pros- 
elytes ;  nay,  the  prevailing  sentiment  is  one  of  utter 
contentedness  and  even  exclusiveness.  This  is  our  way, 
this  is  ancestral,  this  is  bound  up  with  glorious  traditions. 
The  Persians,  the  Phoenicians,  the  Egyptians,  have  their 
own  ways,  which  concern  us  no  more  than  their  food  or 
dress,  or  their  mode  of  giving  in  marriage,  or  burying 
their  dead. 

But  to  return  to  the  Heliconian  farmer  and  shepherd. 
These  times,  our  times  are  evil  :  where  might  is  right, 
where  the  hawk  despoils  the  nightingale  at  will  (202 
sqq.^).  This  is  the  Iron  Age  (v.  176  sqq.):  neither  in  the 
daytime  do  men  cease  from  toil  and  woe,  nor  at  night  do 
they  pause  in  their  experience  of  perishing.  Infidelity 
is  common  in  marriage  and  children  dishonor  their  own 
parents  as  they  grow  old.  Violence  and  perjury  prevail. 
Envy  is  everywhere.  Aidds  (the  delicate  shunning  of 
evil)  and  Nemesis  (the  suum  cuique  in  the  dealings  of 
men)  have  left  the  abodes  of  men  and  sought  refuge 
among  the  Olympians.  How  gray  and  gloomy  is  this 
life,  then.  Twice  did  the  knowing  husbandman  of  Askra 
work  into  his  verse  the  national  legend  of  Prometheus, 
so  close  was  his  affinity  for  it.  That  men  have  some  fair 
measure  of  civilization,  the  very  possession  of  Fire,  that 
mighty  and  universal  instrument  to  better  this  poor  life  of 
man  on  the  earth:  it  has  come  to  man,  not  at  all  through 
the  mercy  or  bounty  of  Zeus,  but  against  his  will.  Pro- 
metheus (fore-counsel,  fore-thinker)  secretly  filched  it 
from  the  abode  of  the  Gods  and  brought  it  to  men.  The 


76  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

gods  then  begrudge  to  men  the  prime  agency  for  better- 
ing their  life  and  lot :  their  own  exclusive  privileges  are 
trespassed  upon  by  Titan's  son  :  men  assimilate  them- 
selves unduly  to  those  beings  who  are  essentially  their 
betters,  but  who  cherish  and  desire  to  maintain  their  own 
superiority  and  men's  inferiority.  Such  gods  are  feared  : 
they  cannot  be  loved. 

As  to  the  bitter  and  gloomy  delineation  by  Hesiod  of 
the  estate  of  marriage,  of  celibacy  and  fatherhood  we  have 
reason  to  surmise,  that  the  Heliconian  had  personal  expe- 
riences that  colored  unfavorably  his  general  abstractions 
and  led  him  to  the  cheerless  views  which  he  takes  of 
women  and  children,  the  former  being  for  him,  in  the 
main,  drones  in  the  hive  ("Theog.,"  v.  595).  It  is  a 
narrow  horizon. 

In  the  latter  part  of  the  "  Works  and  Days "  we  have 
the  odd  blending  of  wisdom  and  folly,  of  hard  sense  and 
superstition,  of  experience  and  folklore  beliefs.  We  learn 
when  work  must  be  done,  and  how  it  must  be  done  in 
order  to  be  profitable  and  productive  —  a  farmer's  alma- 
nac —  and  also  the  earliest  exposition  of  the  homely  cycle 
of  semi-religious  fancies  growing  into  the  souls  of  men 
out  of  his  worship  of  Nature.  Marriage  and  offspring 
are  treated  ("Works,"  695  sqq.^)  in  the  main  as  a  matter  of 
husbandry  and  domestic  economy:  the  moral  aspect  of 
all  these  things  is  not  at  all  conspicuous. 

The  essence  of  these  earlier  records  of  Greek  supersti- 
tion is  an  obvious  symbolism,  e,g.  do  not  beget  children 
when  you  have  returned  from  a  funeral,  but  when  you 
have  come  from  a  sacrificial  banquet.  Do  not  cross 
rivers  on  foot  before  you  have  prayed,  looking  into  the 
current,  and  washed  your  hands  with  clear  water.  Simi- 
larly is  the  Sun  honored.  As  to  the  variety  of  days,  good 
and  bad,  we  must  limit  ourselves  here  to  a  small  number 
of  illustrations  :  the  sixteenth  day  of  the  month  (v.  782) 
is  very  profitable  for  plants  :  it  is  not  a  good  day  for 
birth  or  marriage.  The  seventh  day  of  the  month  is  a 
sacred  day  :  on  this  day  Apollo  was  born  by  Leto.  It 
is  bad  for  a  girl  baby  to  be  born  on  the  sixth  of  the 


GODS  AND  MEN  IN  HOMER  AND  HESIOD         77 

month  ;   but  a  good   day  for  the   gelding   of   kids   and 
young  rams. 

The  ninth  is  a  favorable  day  for  the  birth  of  girl  or  boy. 
Few  know  that  the  twenty-ninth  of  the  month  is  the  best 
day  for  launching  a  ship.  The  fourth  is  the  best  day  to 
bring  the  new  bride  into  your  own  home.  On  the  whole 
there  was  much  dependent  on  personal  and  on  individual 
experience :  "  One  praises  one  kind  of  day  and  the  other 
another,  but  few  know"  "Sometimes  a  day  is  a  step- 
mother and  sometimes  a  mother."  The  "discrimination 
of  birds  "  (v.  801)  is  a  subject  upon  which  I  cannot  enter 
here  in  detail.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  Bird  and  Omen,  both 
in  Homer  and  in  Hesiod,  are  veritably  interchangeable 
terms.  These  particular  birds,  however  (  Oi6n6&),  are  the 
great  ones,  —  eagles,  vultures,  kites,  hawks,  who  soar  and 
float  in  the  ether,  and  are  thus  "co-dwellers  with  the 
gods."  On  the  whole  we  feel  that  these  tenets  and  ten- 
dencies mark  the  religion  of  the  Greek  people,  a  congeries 
of  usages  bound  up  with  worship  and  observation  of  this 
nature  in  which  men  live  and  have  their  being,  the  mo- 
tives being  in  the  main  comprehensible  as  residing  within 
the  categories  of  profit  and  loss. 


NOTE.  —  This  book  is  intended  neither  to  be  a  further  antiquarian 
book  nor  a  bibliographical  index.  Such  accumulation  has  come  to  be 
quite  an  academic  fad,  and  utterly  fictitious  as  to  serious  value. 
Particularly  is  this  so  when  dished  out  (from  the  card  catalogues  of 
modern  well-stocked  libraries,  like  that  of  Columbia  University,  in 
New  York,  e.g.)  upon  the  unsuspecting  and  somewhat  remote  reader  ; 
particularly  by  some  youth  who  in  a  year  or  two  desires  to  attain 
distinction  as  a  "scholar."  I  shall,  then,  append  (for  those  who 
wish  to  pursue  the  subject  further)  the  names  of  only  a  few  books  or 
of  their  authors. 

In  America,  Professor  Seymour  of  Yale,  taken  from  us  since  I  first 
wrote  this,  has  pursued  Homeric  studies  with  more  consistent  devo- 
tion than  any  other  classicist.  Of  Hesiod  the  hundred  years  or  more 
of  American  classicism  have  not,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  produced  a 
single  edition.  The  most  eminent  student  of  Hesiod  in  Europe 
during  the  nineteenth  century,  in  my  opinion,  was  Georg  Friedrich 
Schoemann  of  Greifswald  (1793-1879).  His  discussion  of  Greek 
Religion  (in  Vol.  2  of  his  "  Griechische  Alterthiimer,"  Berlin,  3d  ed., 
1873)  remains  the  sanest  and  soundest  treatise  known  to  me.  Schoe- 


78  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

maun  had  a  profound  aversion  to  inject  into  remote  data  any  current 
academic  notions  or  categories  of  speculation.  The  "  Scholia "  on 
Homer's  Iliad,  precious  remnants  of  the  best  learning  of  the  Greek 
world  itself,  are  available  now  especially  in  the  Oxford  edition  by 
Wilhelm  Dindorf,  1875-1877.  From  these  relics  of  the  past,  infinitely 
better  than  from  any  modern  edition,  can  we  realize  the  tremendous 
import  of  Homer  for  the  Grecian  world.  Unchanged  by  any  later 
book  is  the  value  of  C.  Fr.  Naegelsbach,  Homerische  Theologie,  Niirn- 
berg,  first  edition  1840,  and  later  editions.  This  great  and  noble 
scholar  had  at  bottom  the  vision  of  St.  Paul,  of  antiquity  groping 
after  truth.  Of  English  scholars,  I  mention  Gladstone's  "Juventus 
Mundi"  " the  Gods  and  Men  of  the  Heroic  Age"  published  by  him  at 
fifty-eight  or  so,  1868. 

For  mere  knowledge  of  data  and  spirit  of  ancient  myths,  Preller 
remains  notable.  The  Mythological  Cyclopedia  of  W.  H.  Roscher, 
" A usfahrliches  Lexikon  der  Griechischen  und  Romischen  Mythologie" 
1884  sqq.,  is  well  known.  It  is  a  sweeping  together  of  every  shred 
or  grain  without  any  regard  as  to  intrinsic  value  or  weight.  Anti- 
quarian and  sesthetical  interests  dominate  here  :  many  of  the  collabo- 
rators are  morally  obtuse  and  suffer  from  a  certain  strabismus.  If 
it  had  not  been  for  the  wonderful  dexterity  and  noble  perfection  of 
Greek  sculpture,  most  of  that  detail  would  be,  to  the  last  degree, 
vapid  and  without  importance.  There  is  an  unctuous  and  devout 
tone  in  many  of  these  writers,  which  tone,  considering  the  essential 
futility  of  their  lucubrations,  is  quite  amusing.  I  conclude  this  note 
with  a  passage  of  Quintilian,  who  lived  so  much  nearer  to,  nay,  m  the 
bliss  of  both  legends  and  art  works  (I,  8,  18)  :  "  For  to  pursue  in 
detail  (persequi)  what  every  individual  person,  at  any  time,  of  those 
absolutely  unworthy  of  any  consideration,  has  said,  is  the  mark 
either  of  excessive  wretchedness  or  of  empty  boastfulness,  and  re- 
tards or  smothers  the  native  abilities  (of  young  students)  which  were 
better  devoted  to  other  things."  My  second  chapter  has,  I  flatter 
myself,  put  the  Golden  Age  of  the  Humanists  into  soberer  illumina- 
tion. It  is  simply  absurd  to  claim  that  you  cannot  get  too  much  of 
this  culture.  How  much  insincere  pretence  is  still  bound  up  with 
this  academic  attitude  1 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE   SEVEN  WISE  MEN.    JESO? 

IN  the  century  or  more  preceding  the  Persian  wars 
a  popular  philosophy  gained  wide  currency  among  the 
Greeks,  which  they  attached  to  definite  men  of  their  own 
speech,  mainly  men  of  practical  life  and  public  service. 
The  currency  of  any  form  of  wisdom  demands  our  re- 
spectful attention.  Let  us  see  what  the  Seven  Wise  Men 
really  were. 

A  Canonic  number  is  more  quickly  established  than  are 
the  canonic  qualifications  for  intellectual  and  moral  leader- 
ship. Of  course  and  obviously  the  Seven  never  met.  But 
the  Greek  people  loved  to  conceive  all  human  goodness  and 
wisdom  in  some  concrete  and  palpable  human  relation,  of 
descent  or  discipleship  :  here  they  had  tales  of  banquets 
or  conferences,  or  of  a  splendid  prize,  a  golden  tripod, 
which  was  sent  from  one  to  the  other.  That  the  names 
of  these  Sages  became  dear  to  the  Hellenes  is  honorable 
to  them.  How  did  they  become  national  figures  ?  After 
all,  the  bright  world  of  the  ^Egean  was  in  a  state  not  of 
lethargy  but  of  incessant  contact  of  its  elements  through 
trade,  through  tale  and  gossip,  but  much  more  through 
the  local  or  regional  or  universal  assemblies,  a  form  of 
non-political  concourse  which  the  Greeks  called  Pane- 
gyris  (All-gathering),  where  things  Greek  were  born  and 
whence,  I  believe,  they  passed  into  common  possession. 
In  the  main,  as  I  have  already  intimated,  these  were  men 
honored  at  home  for  public  service  or  guidance.  It  was 
this  tried  and  tested  character  in  the  main  that  endowed 
pithy  sayings  of  theirs  with  so  wide  acceptation.  No 
efforts  were  here  made  to  solve  the  great  problems  of  life 
and  thought :  any  Greek  could  appropriate  and  absorb 
the  homely  wisdom  ascribed.  It  would  be  quite  futile  to 

79 


80  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

waste  effort  on  attempts  to  decipher  and  delineate  indi- 
vidual or  racial  character  here.  Greek  national  feeling 
cherished  these  sayings  and  some  were,  in  time,  rendered 
doubly  famous  by  especial  commemoration  in  what  we 
may  call  the  Westminster  Abbey  of  the  Greek  world, 
the  temple  of  Apollo  at  Delphi.  Thus  Pausanias,  the 
travelling  antiquarian  of  Hadrian's  time  and  of  the  An- 
tonines,  reports  (book  10,  24,  1)  :  "  In  the  pronaos  (fore- 
temple)  at  Delphi  there  are  written  beneficial  sayings 
bearing  on  human  life  :  they  were  written  by  (i.e.  the 
authors  are)  men  who  the  Greeks  say  were  wise.  These 
were,  of  Ionia,  Tholes  of  Miletus  and  Bias  of  Priene,  of 
the  ^Eolians  in  Lesbos,  Pittakos  of  Mitylene,  of  the  Dorians 
in  Asia,  Kleobulos  of  Lindos  (Rhodes),  and  Solon  of  Athens 
and  Ohilon  of  Sparta.  As  for  the  Seventh,  Plato  the  son 
of  Ariston  has  enumerated"  (in  his  "  Protagoras,"  343, 
a)  :  "instead  of  Periander  son  of  Kypselos,  My  son  of 
Chenai.  ..."  "These  men  then  came  to  Delphi  and 
dedicated  to  Apollo  the  ever  quoted  sayings  :  '  Know 
Thyself  and  '  Overdo  Nothing.' r  Periander,  the  autocrat 
of  Corinth  and  patron  of  the  poet  Arion,  Periander,  I  say, 
was  by  the  current  judgment  of  Greece  enrolled  with  the 
Seven,  and  so  too  by  Plutarch  in  his  dramatized  essay. 
The  Seven  were,  in  short,  honored  for  their  wit  and 
wisdom:  no  standard  of  moral  or  political  perfection  was 
exacted  of  them  by  the  consciousness  of  that  earlier 
Greece.  The  main  thing  then  for  us  is  to  observe  that 
the  Greeks  laid  aside  the  extreme  clannishness  and  the 
petty  and  mortal  jealousy  which  ordinarily  vitiated  their 
political  life  and  made  their  peculiar  failure  of  political 
neighborliness. 

Nearest  to  exact  habits  of  scientific  observation  and  of 
physical  speculation  was  Thales,  whom  Greek  tradition 
made  journey  in  the  famous  Kingdom  of  the  Pharaohs  in 
quest  of  science  and  wisdom. 

What  then  were  the  sayings  which  the  Greek  spirit 
prized  so  much  ?  "  Money,  money  makes  the  man  :  no 
poor  man  can  attain  eminence."  As  a  mere  convenience 
of  tradition,  I  shall  ascribe  names  as  they  are  transmitted 


THE  SEVEN  WISE  MEN.    J3SOP  81 

in  the  compilation  of  Diogenes  Laertius,  I.  (It  is  purely 
an  antiquarian  matter  and  of  exceptional  futility  to  try  to 
do  more.) 

Of  Thales  :  "  Not  many  words  display  sensible  opinion. 
Some  one  wise  thing  search  for,  some  one  precious  thing 
choose  thou  ;  for  (thus)  you  will  stop  the  unlimited  talk- 
ing tongues  of  babbling  men."  "  The  most  ancient  of  ex- 
isting beings  is  God,  for  he  is  unborn.  The  fairest  is  the 
Universe,  for  it  is  the  work  of  God.  Greatest  thing  is 
Space,  for  it  holds  all  things.  Swiftest  thing  is  the 
Mind,  for  it  runs  through  all.  Strongest  thing  is  Ne- 
cessity, for  it  has  power  over  all.  Wisest  thing  is  Time, 
for  it  finds  out  everything.  ..."  To  Thales  is  ascribed 
the  saying  that  "everything  was  full  of  gods"  (Aris- 
totle, "  De  Anima,"  I,  5)  :  an  abstract  axiom  of  the  basis  of 
the  popular  polytheism  of  the  Greeks,  i.e.  life  is  curi- 
ously and  mysteriously  all-prevailing,  a  brief  point  only 
away  from  the  Pantheism  which  seems  so  obvious  to  the 
soul  that  loses  sight  of  the  soul.  Practical  wisdom,  how- 
ever, will  rarely  concern  itself  with  problems  so  profound, 
with  concerns  so  grave.  Of  Bias  were  cited  the  follow- 
ing :  "  Be  pleasing  to  all  the  citizens,  in  whatever  common- 
wealth thou  tarriest  ;  for  it  has  very  great  gratefulness  ; 
but  Self-pleasing  manner  often  flares  out  into  harmful 
woe."  "Unfortunate  is  he  on  whose  shoulders  misfor- 
tune is  not  laid."  "It  is  difficult  nobly  to  bear  the 
change  for  the  worse."  "  It  is  a  disease  of  the  soul  to  be 
in  love  with  things  impossible."  "  One  should  measure 
life  as  though  anticipating  a  long  and  a  short  span  of 
living."  "One  should  love  with  the  conviction  that 
sometime  in  the  future  the  loved  ones  will  hate  you  ; 
for  most  men  are  evil."  Being  asked  in  what  pursuit 
man  takes  pleasure  he  answered  :  "In  making  a  profit." 
"Do  not  speak  fast,  for  it  betokens  insanity."  "Of  the 
gods  say,  that  they  are."  "Whatever  welfare  thou  hast, 
ascribe  it  to  the  gods."  "Do  not  praise  an  unworthy 
man  on  account  of  his  riches."  "As  thy  travelling 
money  from  youth  to  old  age  take  with  thyself  wisdom  ; 
for  this  is  more  enduring  than  the  other  possessions." 


82  TESTIMONIUM 

Even  Heraclitus,  the  bitter-souled  philosopher  of  Ephesus, 
spoke  appreciatively  of  Bias,  and  the  people  of  Priene, 
the  city  of  Bias,  consecrated  an  enclosure  (re/iei/o?,  tSmenos) 
to  his  memory  (Diogenes  Laertius,  I,  c.  5).  Of  Kleobu- 
los  of  Lindos  in  Rhodes,  there  were  quoted  :  "  When  thou 
bestowest  thy  daughters  in  marriage,  they  should  be  vir- 
gins as  to  their  growth,  but  women  as  to  their  sense." 
"  Bestow  benefactions  on  thy  friend  that  he  be  more  thy 
friend:  as  to  thy  enemy  make  him  thy  friend."  "Do 
not  be  tenderly  attentive  to  your  wife  nor  have  a  conten- 
tion with  her  in  the  presence  of  strangers."  "Do  not 
chastise  a  slave  in  the  course  of  cups,  for  you  will  seem 
to  be  drunk."  "Measure  is  best."  "  Ignorance  prevails 
in  the  major  part  of  mankind,  and  so  goes  prolixity  of 
speech."  "Be  a  master  of  pleasure."  "Love  to  hear 
rather  than  to  talk."  "Educate  your  children."  "Dis- 
solve enmity,"  or  as  it  was  presented  in  a  later  iambic 
form  :  "  Educate  thy  children,  understanding  that  by  so 
much  is  the  wise  man  stronger  than  the  untaught,  as  a 
god  is  judged  to  differ  from  a  mortal  man."  "When 
prosperous  be  not  haughty,  do  not  grovel  when  you  are 
in  trouble."  "  Marry  from  among  your  equals,  for  if  you 
take  from  your  betters  you  will  get  yourself  masters 
instead  of  kinsmen."  "Know  how  to  bear  bravely  the 
changes  of  fortune." 

One  of  the  greater  personalities  among  the  Seven  was 
Pittakos  of  Lesbos.  About  608  (a  little  before  the  prime 
of  Solon)  his  fellow-citizens  made  him  a  kind  of  dictator 
or  arbitrator  among  the  bitterly  contending  parties  or  fac- 
tions of  his  native  isle.  The  aristocracy  had  succumbed 
to  the  vindictive  fury  of  the  suffering  demos :  a  tyrant  or 
autocrat  thus  arose  :  him,  it  seems,  Pittakos  drove  away. 
To  Aristotle's  retrospect  (" Analytica  Priora"  II,  c.  27) 
this  patriotic  statesman  was  the  embodiment  of  the  stren- 
uous and  energetic  character:  further,  he  was  on  the  one 
hand  ambitious  but  no  less  liberty-loving  :  he  was  good,  he 
was  wise.  A  man,  in  short,  not  much  below  the  stature  of 
Solon:  for  he  too  had  it  in  his  power  to  appropriate  the 
supreme  power :  he  chose  not  to  do  so.  Or  was  it  merely 


THE  SEVEN  WISE  MEN.    ^SOP  83 

in  his  lucid  mind  the  wiser  balancing  of  boons  and  of 
evils.  I  for  my  part,  profoundly  impressed  with  the 
essential  evil  in  the  moral  groundwork  of  man,  an  im- 
pression deepened  by  a  wide  observation  of  life  and  human 
history,  I  for  my  part  am  cheerfully  willing  to  emphasize 
this  political  goodness.  Some  of  the  interlocutors  in 
Plato's  "  Gorgias  "  would  have  called  him  a  fool :  so  would 
he  be  in  the  ethical  system,  of  the  great  Corsican.  With 
this  noble  patriotism  and  political  disinterestedness  there 
was  coupled  in  this  Lesbian  sage  a  practical  knack  for 
enacting  wise  statutes,  e.g.  that  the  penalties  imposed 
upon  tort  committed  in  drunkenness  should  be  twice  as 
large  as  those  laid  on  the  sober  malefactor.  The  little 
commonwealths  of  the  Greeks  made  such  moderation  and 
self-denial  as  that  of  Pitta kos  doubly  noteworthy  because 
death,  exile,  confiscation,  were  the  ordinary  phenomena 
attending  political  victories  or  factional  defeats :  an  up- 
rooting of  the  very  blessings  of  civilization  and  social 
order.  The  unutterable  bitterness  of  exile  reminds  one 
of  Daute  and  the  factional  fury  of  Florentine  politics  in 
his  day,  but  it  exceeded  this  by  far.  He  died,  according 
to  Diogenes  L.,  in  569  B.C.,  a  centenarian,  according  to 
repute.  I  excerpt  a  few  of  the  apothegms  ascribed  to  him 
(e.g.  by  Stobseus,  "  Florilegium"  3.  79,  4) :  "  Remember 
friends  when  present  and  absent."  "Do  not  affect  beauty 
in  thy  outward  appearance,  but  in  thy  pursuits  be  thou 
comely."  "  Do  not  enrich  thyself  wrongly."  "  Inaction 
is  annoying."  "  Lack  of  learning  is  an  oppressive  matter." 
"  The  sweetest  thing  is  to  realize  a  passionate  desire." 
"  Teach  and  learn  what  is  better."  "  Put  thyself  under 
bonds  :  woe  is  at  hand."  "  Do  not  hesitate  to  flatter  your 
parents." 

The  noblest  saying  assigned  to  him  by  Greek  tradition T 
is  this :  "  Forgiveness  is  better  than  Remorse,"  this, 
whether  it  accompanied  the  pardon  of  Pittakos  freely 
granted  to  the  (unwitting)  slayer  of  his  own  son,  or  whether 
it  was  pronounced  when  he  permitted  his  bitter  political 
enemy,  the  leader  of  the  aristocratic  faction,  the  poet 
Alkaios  (Alcseus),  to  go  free :  so  Heraclitus  alleged. 


84  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

The  saying  in  the  later  case  varied  a  little :  "  Forgiveness 
is  better  than  retribution."  Cited  also  in  Stobseus,  "Flori- 
legia,"  19,  14.  Simonides,  a  thoughtful  and  somewhat 
dialectic  poet  of  the  Persian  wars,  criticised  a  famous  say- 
ing of  Pittakos.  It  was  in  a  victory-ode  written  for  the 
rich  baron  of  Thessaly,  Skopas.  "  'Tis  difficult  to  be 
good,"  i.e.  morally  good,  sound. 

CMlon  represented  Sparta  in  the  canonic  Seven.  We 
must  rest  content  with  the  pale  data  of  Greek  tradition. 
Should  we  anticipate  any  particular  manifestation  of  the 
Doric  or  Doric-Spartan  spirit  we  would  probably  be  dis- 
appointed. Of  the  nobler  sayings  cited  as  from  him  are 
these:  his  gold  test  may  come  first  (Diog.  Laer,  I,  71) : 
"  On  the  sharp  edges  of  (certain)  stones  gold  is  tested, 
giving  a  palpable  proof ;  and  in  the  matter  of  gold  the 
mind  of  good  men  and  of  bad  gives  demonstration."  The 
Spartan  spirit,  perhaps.  "  Control  thy  tongue,  especially 
at  a  wine  party."  "  Do  not  threaten  any  one:  it  is 
womanish."  "  Do  not  speak  ill  of  the  dead."  "Rather 
choose  loss  than  a  base  profit,  for  the  one  grieves  you  for 
once,  but  the  other^  forever."  Behold,  dear  reader,  the 
simple, but  transcendent  gravity  of  conscience:  "forever," 
why  "  forever "  ?  Clearly  here  too  Matthew  Arnold's 
"free  play  of  intelligence"  is  inferior  to  righteousness: 
it  does  not,  in  itself,  beget  righteousness.  But  the  danger 
and  elusive  problem  in  bringing  up  from  the  fragments  of 
tradition  a  fair  statement  of  what  actually  was  held  and 
honored,  lies  in  the  subjective  sympathies  and  antipathies 
of  your  scholar.  The  truth,  here,  lies  between  the  Eng- 
glish  Radical  and  follower  of  James  Mill,  and  believer  in 
the  institution  of  democracy,  George  Grote  on  the  one 
side  and  Ernst  Curtius  on  the  other.  A  pupil  of  Welcker 
and  Otf ried  Miiller,  Ernst  Curtius,  has  been  called  the  last 
of  the  Olympian  victors.  Particularly  in  his  "  Greek 
History,"  II,  4  ("  The  Unity  of  Greece  "),  Curtius  yields 
himself  up  to  that  ecstatic  idealization,  which  his  own  sub- 
jective temperament  has  injected  into  the  Hellenic  world. 

I  return  to  Chilon.  Other  sayings  are  these  :  "  Do 
not  speak  ill  of  the  dead."  "Do  not  laugh  at  the  un- 


THE  SEVEN  WISE  MEN.    ^ESOP  85 

fortunate."  "Let  your  tongue  not  run  ahead  of  your 
mind."  "  When  you  are  strong,  be  gentle,  in  order  that 
those  near  you  may  revere  you  more  than  fear  you."  In 
his  old  age,  so  says  the  tradition,  he  once  said  that  he  was 
not  conscious  of  anything  unlawful  in  his  own  life.  But 
he  was  doubtful  about  one  thing.  He  was  judge  in  the 
case  of  a  friend.  When  the  time  came  for  the  verdict,  he 
himself  gave  it  in  accordance  with  the  statute,  but  per- 
suaded his  fellow-judge  to  acquit  the  defendant:  before 
death  then  he  regretted  such  a  compromise.  The  person- 
ality of  Periander  as  one  of  the  Seven  is  indeed  a  problem, 
no  less  for  Plato  who  refuses  to  recognize  him  as  worthy 
of  a  place  among  the  Seven  as  for  the  modern  student  of 
the  spiritual  elements  in  Greek  civilization.  It  is  indeed 

guzzling  that  the  Greeks  should  at  all  have  assigned  so 
igh  an  honor  to  a  personality  of  which  their  own  records 
told  so  much  evil.  Son  of  a  successful  autocrat  of  Corinth, 
he  reflected  much  on  the  best  ways  of  managing  such  a 
government.  Periander  ruled  over  Corinth  forty-four  years, 
drawing  the  reins  of  government  much  more  taut  than  his 
father  Kypselos  had  done  (Aristotle,  "Politics,"  5,  12). 
But  he  is  charged  with  having  caused  the  death  of  his 
pregnant  wife  Melissa  by  a  kick.  Later  he  slew  the  con- 
cubines through  whose  slandering  insinuations  he  had  been 
induced  to  do  the  deed.  Of  acts  involving  the  extremest 
forms  of  sexual  infamy  I  will  say  nothing :  these  reports 
may  be  due  to  the  bitter  hatred  which  his  hard  govern- 
ment and  ruthless  acts  of  spoliation  had  engendered  in  the 
breasts  of  his  Corinthian  subjects.  Vastly  more  than 
Croesus  might  he  have  served  Herodotus  as  the  example 
to  illustrate  the  transitoriness  of  human  happiness. 
Plutarch  indeed  sets  his  banquet  of  the  Seven  Wise  Men 
at  the  very  court  of  this  prince,  but,  with  a  fair  regard  for 
the  fitness  of  things,  he  places  it  at  a  point  in  the  career 
of  the  Corinthian  ruler  preceding  that  chain  of  sin  and 
of  woe.  The  Italian  princes  of  the  Renaissance  could 
furnish  ample  material  for  parallels,  for  which,  however, 
we  have  no  space.  Aristotle  rates  him  with  the  Seven, 
maintaining  herein,  it  seems,  the  prevailing  voice  of  the 


86  TESTIMONIUM  AKIALE 

popular  Greek  tradition.  To  him  were  ascribed,  e.g., 
"It  is  difficult  to  please  all."  "Pleasures  are  perish- 
able, honors  immortal."  "Do  nothing  for  the  sake  of 
money."  He  is  said  to  have  died  from  grief  at  baffled 
revenge. 

The  greatest  name  among  the  Seven  is  that  borne  by 
Solon  of  Athens,  whom  his  countrymen  soon  canonized. 
Aristotle's  specific  account  of  the  history  of  the  Athenian 
government  (one  of  his  numerous  monographs  on  specific 
city  commonwealths,  first  published  in  1891  by  Kenyon) 
has  added  much  to  our  previous  knowledge.  A  patriotic 
Athenian,  impatient  of  any  stain  or  humiliation  of  the 
fair  fame  of  Athens  even  in  his  earlier  manhood,  he  served 
her  in  her  greatest  need.  In  so  small  a  commonwealth, 
with  so  narrow  opportunities  of  livelihood,  the  lot  of  the 
poorer  citizens,  of  tenants  and  other  humble  people  of 
Attica,  had  become  deplorable.  The  bitterness  and  tension 
had  reached  a  point  where  internecine  strife  and  civil 
disruption  seemed  truly  imminent.  Here  Solon  as  an 
extraordinary  commissioner  (while  nominally  the  first  one 
of  the  Nine  "Archons")  revised  the  form  of  government, 
facilitated  a  settlement  of  hopeless  debt  troubles,  not  only 
by  reducing  the  value  of  the  monetary  standard  of  Athens, 
but  also  by  bearing  a  personal  loss  of  seven  talents. 

From  his  earlier  manhood  Solon  was  wont  to  compose 
practical  poetry,  in  the  current  form  of  the  Elegiac  two- 
line  form,  the  "  distich."  In  that  earlier  portion,  how- 
ever, Solon  also  sung  of  love.  Comprehensive  word,  this. 
I  am  grieved  to  say  with  all  plainness  that  the  "  love  "  of 
these  poems  was  as  vile  and  gross  as  the  current  form  of 
Greek  vice.  Plutarch  ("Erotikoa"  c.  5)  cites  the  lines  with 
apologetic  comment.  I  cannot  well  omit  them.  "  In  the 
lovely  blossoms  of  youth  thou  wilt  love  boys,  yearning 
for  thighs  and  sweet  lips."  Let  us  credit  Plutarch  at  least 
when,  proceeding,  he  refers  to  all  this  as  an  association 
contrary  to  nature  (napa  <£v<nz>).  The  passage  just  cited, 
then,  Plutarch  charges  to  Solon's  young  manhood  :  the 
following  he  thinks  were  composed  by  him  when  advanced 
somewhat :  "  The  deeds  of  the  goddess  born  in  Cyprus 


THE  SEVEN  WISE  MEN.    ^SOP  87 

are  now  pleasing  to  me,  and  those  of  the  wine-god  and 
those  of  the  Muses  who  cause  good  cheer  to  men."  Solon, 
I  say,  wrote  both.  And  Apuleius  of  Madaura,  a  pagan 
rhetor  of  Africa  (fl.  170  A.D.),  refers  to  the  first  citation 
as  versus  lascivissimus,  in  spite  of  which  Solon  was  a 
"serious  man,  severe,  and  a  philosopher."  One  might 
refer  to  this  unspeakable  vice  as  the  very  worm  which 
under  the  bright  and  beautiful  surface  was  destroying  the 
very  core  and  kernel  of  Greece.  Whether  the  successive 
philosophies  accomplished  anything  for  betterment  here, 
we  will  see  later  on.  I  shall  not  devote  any  specific  treat- 
ment to  this  awful  and  persistent  matter  (in  my  book). 
Plutarch  may  fairly  be  described  as  one  of  the  earlier 
classicists,  who  strove  to  idealize  and  nobly  illumine  the 
greater  figures  of  the  Hellenic  past.  But,  with  all  this, 
his  vision  of  "  Greekdom  "  was  vastly  truer  than  that  of 
Winckelmann,  Goethe,  Walter  Pater,  and  the  remaining 
ecstatic  members  of  the  choir  innumerable.  I  say  I  shall 
not  build  any  one  chapter  of  my  book  that  it  may  be  a 
charnel  house.  Still  I  will  so  far  digress  at  this  particular 
point  as  to  cite  significant  words  not  indeed  from  St.  Paul, 
but  from  this  same  Philhellene,  Plutarch  of  Chaeronea, 
from  his  discourse  on  Love  ("Erotikos,"  §  9).  "  Only  the 
other  day  "  (so  to  speak)  "  subsequent  to  the  stripping 
of  lads  and  the  baring  of  their  persons  Love  slipped  into 
the  gymnasia  and  gaining  association  imperceptibly  and 
working  its  way  in,  then  little  by  little  in  the  wrestling 
schools  having  grown  feathers  (a  Platonic  reminiscence 
of  Plutarch)  in  the  wrestling  schools,  is  no  longer  re- 
strainable,  but  it  abuses  and  treats  with  contumely  that 
connubial  love.  ..." 

As  for  the  rest,  Solon,  in  his  famous  code  of  594  B.C., 
had  a  statute  forbidding  a  pornus  (male  prostitute)  to 
address  his  fellow-citizens,  to  speak  in  public  at  all,  thus 
branding  him  with  that  civil  infamy  which  was  the  chief 
deterrent  from  evil  doing  in  the  commonwealths  of  Greece, 
there  being  no  religious  or  philosophic  system  of  morality 
(cf.  Diogenes  Laertius,  I,  55).  To  realize  this  is  espe- 
cially difficult  for  the  modern  reader.  A  few  other  data 


88  TESTIMONIUM  ANIM^E 

from  his  code  noteworthy  to  us  here  are  these  :  "  If  one 
does  not  support  his  parents,  he  shall  be  wilfully  infamous. 
So  also  shall  he  be  who  consumes  his  patrimony."  Infamy 
also  was  laid  upon  him  who  remained  neutral  in  the  time 
of  civil  feud  or,  as  they  called  it,  "  Stasis,"  when  two  parties 
actually  rose  against  each  other.  (Aristotle,  on  the 
"  Grovernment  of  Athens  "  c.  8.)  On  the  whole,  he  reaped 
small  thanks  from  the  rich  as  well  as  from  the  poor  and 
had  to  be  content  with  the  consciousness  of  having  achieved 
the  political  salvation  of  his  own  commonwealth.  With 
that  noble  endowment  for  reflection  and  searching  after 
underlying  causes  —  a  gift,  I  say,  more  possessed  by  the 
Attic  people  than  the  other  Greeks  —  thus  then  Solon  too, 
in  his  maturity  of  achievement  and  service,  refers  to  the 
moral  consequences  of  excessive  wealth  :  "  for  surfeit  in- 
solence begets,  when  great  wealth  goes  with  those  men 
whose  mind  is  not  fair"  (Aristotle,  ib.,  c.  12).  His  politi- 
cal wisdom  and  rare  penetration  of  judgment  might  be 
further  illustrated,  but  let  us  rather  turn  to  the  most 
significant  utterance  of  this  man  of  affairs  preserved  for 
us  in  Stobaeus,  "  Florilegium"  9,  25,  which  that  noted  com- 
piler transcribed  under  the  caption  of  "  Righteousness  '* 
(SucoKHTvvrf).  I  append  my  version  :  "  Ye  bright  children 
of  Memory  and  Olympian  Zeus,  Pierian  Muses,  hear  ye 
my  prayer.  Give  me  prosperity  from  the  blissful  gods 
and  from  all  men  always  to  have  good  repute.  And  that 
I  may  be  thus  sweet  to  my  friends*  but  bitter  to  my  enemies : 
to  the  former  an  object  of  reverence  to  behold,  but  awful  to 
look  upon  for  the  others.  Money  I  eagerly  desire  to  have, 
but  unjustly  to  possess  it  I  will  not ;  at  all  events  later 
comes  retribution.  Wealth,  which  the  gods  give,  comes 
into  the  possession  of  man  (as  wealth)  enduring,  from  the 
lowest  root  to  the  top  :  but  he,  whom  men  honor  under 
the  spur  of  insolence,  he  walks  not  in  orderly  fashion,  but 
then  follows  the  persuasion  of  evil  deeds,  against  his  (better) 
will;  and  swiftly  baneful  ruin  is  intermingled. 

"  A  beginning  comes  from  a  little  like  a  grain  of  wheat : 
paltry  at  first,  but  it  ends  with  distress :  for  not  long  for  mor- 
tals endure  the  deeds  of  insolence.  But  Zeus  looks  at  the 


THE  SEVEN  WISE  MEN.    ^SOP  89 

end  of  all,  and  abruptly,  as  the  wind  suddenly  scatters  clouds 
in  springtime,  a  wind  which  first  moves  the  very  ground 
waters  of  the  billowy  barren  sea,  and  then,  over  the  wheat- 
bearing  earth  ravages  the  fair  tilling  of  men,  and  then 
arrives  at  the  steep  vault  of  heaven,  abode  of  the  gods, 
and  makes  one  behold  the  cloudless  blue  again:  and  the 
power  of  the  sun  shines  fair  over  the  fruitful  earth,  but  of 
clouds  there  is  nothing  more  to  see :  such  is  the  retribution 
of  Zeus,  nor  at  each  individual  occurrence  like  a  mortal  man 
does  he  become  filled  with  sharp  anger;  but  not  always  to 
the  very  end  does  he  escape  his  attention  who  has  a  sinful 
spirit,  and  utterly  is  it  revealed  at  the  end;  but  one  suffers 
retribution  at  once,  another  later;  but  if  they  escape  them- 
selves and  the  fate  of  the  gods  does  not  pursue  and  over- 
take them,  by  all  means  it  will  come  again  another  time; 
guiltless  men  suffer  retribution  for  the  deeds,  or  their  chil- 
dren or  their  race  farther  on.  Now  we  mortals  thus  think 
both  good  and  the  evil  one  holds  the  opinion  that  he  him- 
self will  find  one  (advantage?)  before  suffering  anything; 
but  then  (when  stricken)  immediately  he  wails;  up  to  this 
point  gaping  we  are  rejoiced  by  empty  hopes.  And  who- 
soever is  oppressed  under  troublesome  diseases,  how  he  will 
be  well,  this  he  deeply  devises;  but  if  one  lives  in  penury, 
and  the  works  of  poverty  force  him,  his  thought  is  that  by  all 
means  he  will  acquire  much  money.  One  strives  from  this 
starting  point,  the  other  from  that :  the  one  roves  over  the 
sea,  the  deep,  rich  in  fishes,  desiring  to  convey  home  in 
ships  his  grain,  carried  along  by  troublesome  winds,  in  no 
wise  sparing  his  soul;  another,  tilling  the  earth  rich  in 
trees,  for  a  year  does  he  play  the  serf,  of  those  to  whom 
the  curved  ploughshares  are  a  care;  another,  knowing  the 
accomplishments  of  Athena  and  of  Hephaistos  rich  in 
craft,  with  his  two  hands  gathers  a  living;  another,  taught 
endowments  (that  come)  from  the  Olympian  Muses,  know- 
ing measure  of  lovely  wisdom;  another  has  been  made  a 
soothsayer  by  the  lord  the  far-shooting  Apollo,  and  discerns 
the  evil  coming  to  man,  from  afar  off,  whom  ever  (i.e.  the 
soothsayer)  the  gods  attend  on;  as  for  that  which  is  fated 
neither  any  bird  will  fend  it  off,  nor  sacrifices.  Others  are 


90  TESTIMONIUM  ANIMJ3 

they  who  hold  the  achievement  of  Paion  rich  in  remedies, 
the  physicians;  and  on  them  attends  no  consummation. 
Often  from  a  small  smart  a  great  pain  results  and  one  cannot 
remove  it  by  giving  soothing  remedies.  But  him  who  is 
disturbed  with  evil  and  troublesome  diseases,  taking  hold  of 
him  with  his  two  hands  speedily  he  renders  sound.  Moira 
(Fate)  brings  to  mortals  both  good  and  evil;  but  the  gifts 
of  the  immortal  gods  one  cannot  escape  from. 

"  Upon  all  works  does  risk  attend :  nor  does  any  one  know 
how  it  will  be  when  the  affair  is  beginning;  but  he  who 
attempts  to  do  it  well,  falls  into  great  and  heavy  woe,  and 
to  him  who  does  badly,  a  deity  (#eo?)  in  all  matters 
grants  good  fortune  a  delivery  from  foolishness.  Of 
wealth  no  stated  limit  is  established  for  men;  for  those  of 
us  who  now  have  the  amplest  living,  strive  hard  with  twofold 
earnestness.  Who  can  satiate  all?  Gain  do  the  immor- 
tal bestow  upon  mortals,  but  baneful  ruin  (from  gain) 
raises  its  head:  which,  whenever  Zeus  sends  to  avenge, 
one  man  suffers  it  now,  another  suffers  it  then." 


A  kind  of  searching  after  some  divine  order:  but  a 
grave  admission  that  is  by  no  means  discoverable  in  the 
way  men  fare :  for  the  essence  of  Moira  is,  that  it  is  in- 
computable and  incalculable:  it  would  seem  akin  to  him 
to  blind  whim.  We  see,  however,  amply  enough,  that 
the  sage,  as  he  looks  out  upon  actual  life,  and  the  varied 
pursuits  of  men,  lays  stress  on  the  absolute  helplessness 
of  man  and  also  expresses  his  belief  in  a  divine  retribution 
of  wrong.  The  gravest  sentiments  I  have  made  more 
striking  to  the  eye  of  my  readers. 

As  a  kind  of  foreign  member  of  this  famous  assemblage 
of  Sages,  the  Greeks  were  fond  of  placing  Anacharsis  the 
Scythian.  Even  Homer  has  an  admiring  conception  of 
the  "  excellent  milkers  of  mares "  of  the  North,  trans- 
danubian  Nomads,  whose  communal  mode  of  living  made 
a  strong  impression  upon  the  Greek  world:  the  lack  of 
squabbles  about  profit  and  loss,  the  contentment  with 
their  simple  existence,  especially  however  the  rigid  ex- 


THE  SEVEN  WISE  MEN.    ^SOP  91 

elusion  of  material  luxury,  which  latter  breeds  so  much 
of  economic  and  of  moral  evil  among  the  sons  of  men  — 
all  these  things  invested  these  rude  barbarians  with  a 
glamour,  which  we  may  fairly  compare  with  that  dogmatic 
veneration  bestowed  upon  the  so-called  children  of  Nature 
by  Rousseau  and  all  thinkers  kin  to  him.  The  estimation 
in  which  the  Romans  in  their  decline,  e.g.  Tacitus,  held 
the  Germans,  may  likewise  be  fitly  adduced.  These 
Scythians,  by  the  by,  are  considered  by  the  experts  to 
have  been  of  the  great  Mongolian  race.  A  queer  and 
rare  phenomenon  to  the  Greeks  then  was  the  above-men- 
tioned Anacharsis,  who  came  among  the  Greeks  to  learn 
of  their  culture  and  civilization.  The  Greek  Cynics 
of  later  times  made  him  a  kind  of  saint  in  their  particular 
cult,  an  advocate  of  the  simple  life.  As  the  tradition  is 
presented  to  us  in  Diogenes  Laertius,  I,  101,  he  came 
to  Athens  in  592  B.C.,  in  Solon's  day.  Of  that  eminent 
man- he  requested  to  be  made  a  guest-friend,  although  the 
Attic  sage  asserted  that  such  relations  were  possible  only 
in  one's  own  land.  But  he,  the  Northern  stranger,  pro- 
fessed himself  a  citizen  of  the  world.  The  furious  onset  of 
Greek  athletes,  and  their  bruising  strokes,  they  say,  made 
him  pause  in  wonder.  The  use  of  wine,  the  mendacity 
of  trading,  the  risks  of  navigation,  and  other  forms  of 
civilization  he  considered  foolish,  or  evil. 

Even  more  faint  and  vague  is  the  personality  of  ^Esop, 
embodiment  of  the  practical  wisdom  of  human  experience. 
The  item  alone  that  he  was  once  the  slave  of  ladmon  of 
Ephesus,  seems  to  be  widely  established  in  ancient  tradi- 
tion: a  Phrygian  perhaps.  Plutarch  gives  him  a  foot- 
stool in  the  august  company  of  the  Seven  Sages.  —  As  to 
the  philosophy  or  literary  theory  of  the  Fable,  the  keen 
mind  of  Lessing  has  disposed  of  these  things  decisively. 
We  notice  the  wonderful  receptivity  and  assimilative  dis- 
position of  the  Greeks  for  this  homely  philosophy,  in 
which  the  folly  and  wrong-doing  of  mankind  are  marked 
and  mirrored.  It  is  obvious  that  so  germane  a  sphere 
and  substance  of  human  wisdom  was  ever  increased.  The 
nimble-witted  and  nimble-tongued  Athenians  ever  im- 


92  TESTIMONIUM  ANIALE 

provised  freely  in  this  realm:  for  the  fixity  of  detailed 
symbolism,  where  each  beast  had  a  well-established 
meaning  made  for  continual  employment,  the  tendency 
of  the  human  soul  to  endow  non-human  and  non-spiritual 
things,  beings,  beasts,  with  moral  and  spiritual  meaning, 
all  this  is  well  illustrated.  The  general,  the  prevailing 
and  ever  recurrent  type  of  human  folly  or  error  or  sin  is 
exemplified:  at  bottom  we  see  the  abstractions  of  human 
life,  and  the  experience  of  mankind.  The  individual 
is  lost,  and  universal  conviction  settles  down  as  it  were 
into  palpable  and  permanent  moulds.  Large  indeed 
is  the  range  of  this  symbolism.  There  figures  a  start- 
ling array  of  beasts:  the  eagle,  the  nightingale,  goat, 
weasel,  the  cock  and  hen,  fox,  bear,  frog,  ox,  crane,  owl, 
pig,  gazelle,  stag,  elephant,  heron,  viper,  tortoise,  mule, 
tunnyfish,  gull,  horse,  camel,  ape,  dungbeetle,  crab, 
beaver,  donkey,  jackdaw,  cuckoo,  raven,  dove,  swan,  dog, 
dolphin,  gnat,  hare,  lion,  wolf,  bee,  ant,  mouse,  hind,  bat, 
wild  ass,  panther,  quail,  ostrich,  steer,  peacock,  cicada, 
hyena,  watersnake,  toad,  swallow,  goose,  parrot,  flea. 
But  gods  and  men  too  appear,  nor  are  trees  lacking. 
Personifications  even  serve,  such  as  Pleasure  and  Virtue. 
The  homely  world  is  thus  endowed  with  a  kind  of  spiritual 
significance. 

This  morality  in  the  main  is  of  the  utilitarian  order,  and 
the  wisdom  is  that  of  deeper  and  better  fathomed  self- 
interest.  These  tales  entertain  children,  but  they  were 
all  of  them  devised  for  the  sake  of  the  moral.  Many  of 
them  have  become  the  possession  of  mankind,  as,  e.g., 
the  country  mouse  and  the  town  mouse,  the  donkey  in 
the  lion's  skin,  the  false  cry  of  "  wolf,"  the  bag  with  alien 
faults  to  the  fore  and  our  own  unseen,  the  peasant's  sons, 
who  could  not  break  the  bundle  of  sticks,  the  two  women 
picking  the  dark  and  the  gray  hairs  from  the  head  of 
their  lover,  the  stag  admiring  his  antlers  but  holding 
his  fleet  legs  in  slight  esteem,  how  the  steed  purchased 
its  own  servitude,  the  oak  destroyed  and  the  swaying 
reed  surviving  the  hurricane,  the  dog  in  the  manger,  the 
dog  swimming  across  the  stream  and  carrying  meat.  In 


THE  SEVEN  WISE  MEN.    ^ESOP  93 

the  main  these  fables  cry  out  in  monitory  fashion :  "  Do 
not!  "  And  so,  as  in  the  German  epic  of  Reineke  JFuchs, 
the  fox  is  the  deepest,  the  resourcef ulest,  —  it  must  be 
added,  —  the  most  prosperous,  exponent  of  mendacity  and 
intrigue:  a  bitter  tone  of  resignation  is  there  in  this 
condemnation  of  actual  human  society.  Negative  and 
condemnatory  are  almost  all  of  these  fables.  Thus  many 
lead  up  to  what  we  may  call  the  Hellenic  virtue  of  Modera- 
tion, Saneness,  Knowledge  of  one's  limitations  (/ZCT/JIO'TTJ?, 
vafypovvvif) .  A  number  of  these  Apologues  deal  with 
the  practical,  current  religion  of  the  people.  A  poor 
man  (No.  58,  Halm)  suffering  from  disease  vows  a  heca- 
tomb to  the  gods  if  he  recover.  He  regains  his  health, 
but  pays  his  vow  in  little  oxen  formed  of  tallow.  There- 
upon the  gods  send  him  a  dream:  he  is  to  go  to  the 
strand  and  find  a  thousand  gold  pieces.  Hurrying  hither 
he  is  carried  away  by  pirates  who  sell  him  for  a  thousand 
drachmas. 

A  poor  man  has  a  wooden  god,  to  which  (or  should  I 
say  to  whom)  he  prays  in  vain  for  benefaction.  In  a  fit 
of  anger  the  worshipper  dashes  it  to  pieces  against  the 
wall.  The  head  breaks  off  and  gold  rolls  forth.  The 
man  shouts:  "  Tortuous  art  thou  and  unreasonable:  when 
I  honored  thee  thou  gavest  me  no  benefaction,  but  when 
I  struck  thee,  thou  didst  reward  me  with  many  bless- 
ings" (No.  66). 

A  master  is  smitten  (No.  73)  with  an  ugly  slave  girl, 
and  the  latter,  loaded  with  gold  and  purple,  defies  the 
mistress  of  the  house,  and  also  sacrifices,  vows  and  prays 
to  Aphrodite  who  wrought  all  this.  But  the  goddess, 
appearing  to  her  votary  in  a  dream,  tells  her:  "Not  have 
I  made  thee  comely,  but  I  have  perverted  thy  master's 
mind  in  my  anger." 

A  carter  (81)  had  the  misfortune  of  having  his  cart 
tumble  into  a  ravine.  The  carter  stood  by  idly,  praying 
to  Hercules  for  aid.  But  the  god  appeared  and  said: 
"  Take  hold  of  your  wheels  and  prod  your  oxen,  and  then 
pray  to  the  god,  when  you  too  do  something." 

A  farmer's  hoe  was  stolen  and- he  determined  to  put 


94  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

under  oath  those  whom  he  suspected.  But  as  he  deemed 
the  rustic  gods  too  simple  he  determined  to  hie  himself  to 
town,  the  urban  deities  being  shrewder.  But  barely  had 
they  entered  the  gates  when  they  heard  the  voice  of  a 
herald  proclaiming  a  reward  for  the  capture  of  the  thief 
who  had  robbed  the  god.  The  swain  then  said  :  "  I  come 
for  nought,  I  see,  for  this  god  knows  not  who  filched 
from  him!"  (91). 

A  peasant  a-digging  finds  a  piece  of  gold  and  daily  puts 
a  garland  around  Rhea's  (Demeter's)  idol.  But  Fortune 
appears  to  him  and  chiding  him  for  the  false  turn  of  his 
gratitude,  says  :  "  If  this  gold  should  escape  from  your 
possession,  then  indeed  you  would  blame  Fortune!  "  (101). 

A  sorceress  made  a  good  living  by  offering  incantations 
concerned  with  the  ill  will  of  the  gods.  She  is  haled  into 
court  as  an  innovator  of  religion  and  condemned  to  death. 
A  person  who  saw  her  in  court  addressed  her  thus:  "You 
professed  to  have  the  power  of  turning  the  anger  of  the 
gods :  why  were  you  not  able  to  persuade  mere 
men  ?  "  (112). 

Zeus  enjoined  upon  Hermes  the  task  of  administering 
a  dram  to  all  craftsmen.  The  god  of  Cunning  did  so 
and  came  last  of  all  to  the  cobbler.  The  remnant  of  the 
potion  was  very  large,  but  it  was  all  given  to  the  worker 
of  the  last.  And  so  it  came  about  that  the  craftsmen  all 
do  lie,  but  most  of  all  the  shoemakers  (136). 

Zeus  ordained  that  Hermes  should  write  the  sins  of 
men  on  shells  and  place  them  in  a  chest  near  him  in  order 
that  he  might  exact  the  penalties  of  each.  But  inasmuch 
as  the  shells  have  been  utterly  jumbled  together,  some 
shells  fall  more  slowly  and  some  more  swiftly  into  the 
hands  of  Zeus  (152). 

A  man  had  a  demigod  (heros)  in  his  house  and  made  it 
his  business  to  sacrifice  to  this  one  in  a  costly  fashion:  as 
he  was  consuming  his  fortune,  the  demigod  stepped  to 
his  side  by  night  and  said:  "  My  good  man,  stop  wasting 
your  substance,  for  if  you  drain  all,  in  the  end  you  will 
blame  me"  (161). 

A  raven,  caught  in  a  snare,  prayed  to  Apollo,  promising 


THE  SEVEN  WISE  MEN.    .ESOP  95 

to  sacrifice  incense  to  him.  But,  having  been  saved  from 
the  danger,  he  forgot  his  promise.  And  again,  caught  by 
another  snare,  letting  go  Apollo  he  promised  to  sacrifice 
to  Hermes.  And  the  latter  said  to  him:  "You  scoundrel, 
how  can  I  trust  you  who  denied  and  wronged  your  former 
master  ?  " 

Interesting  sidelights  these,  affording  glimpses  of  the 
actual  religiosity  of  the  Greek  people,  —  mainly  of  the 
order:  I  give  that  thou  mayest  give. 

A  few,  only  a  few  of  these  fables,  are  positive  and  noble 
in  spirit,  pointing  to  laws  that  are  categorical,  absolute, 
or  eternal.  The  morality  is  utilitarian,  self-interest  well 
understood. 

But  these  homely  forms  of  literature  made  of  a  people 
in  successive  ages,  symbolizing  the  shrug  of  the  shoulder 
and  the  bitter  sneer,  are  endowed  with  that  curious  force- 
fulness  of  actuality. 

The  jEsopean  fable  was  not  inaptly  made  the  chief 
theme  for  the  preparatory  exercises  in  the  schools  of  the 
Hellenic  world,  where  the  future  orator  and  pleader  was 
prepared  for  his  professional  life. 


CHAPTER  V 

VOICES  FROM  THE  LYRICAL  POETS 

RHYTHM  and  Melody,  chant  and  footfall,  have  passed 
beyond  the  vapor  of  the  Nevermore  here  :  and  nowhere,  in 
the  main,  is  there  more  insincerity  in  the  conventional 
ecstasy  of  the  professional  classicist  than  in  dealing  with 
these  fragments  of  ancient  tradition. 

More  than  elsewhere,  in  passing  among  these  remnants, 
are  we  compelled  to  be  content  with  gleam  and  rarer  ray, 
and  even  the  strength  of  a  Pindar  is  as  numb  and  remote. 

The  measure  of  the  Elegy,  with  its  unit  of  the  proud 
hexameter  joined  to  its  truncated  epodic  brother,  formed 
a  field  quite  different  from  this,  its  epic  sire,  the  proud 
measure  of  the  banquet  hall  and  of  the  listening  multi- 
tudes. Thought,  reflection,  truth,  and  maxim,  as  well  as 
the  knell  of  death  and  the  setting  forth  of  the  worth  of 
the  departed,  all  this  and  more  found  expression  in  the 
Elegiac  distich. 

Solon  we  have  discussed  above,  and  now  shall  first  take 
up  some  of  his  fellow-writers  of  this  measure.  Mimnermos 
of  Kolophon  (fl.  ab.  600  B.C.)  presents  that  ever  familiar 
view  of  life,  the  worth  of  which  passes  when  youth  and 
comeliness  depart.  It  was  the  time  when  Ionian  towns 
submitted  to  the  conquest  of  the  Lydian  kings,  when 
there  ensued  much  interfusion  of  spirit  and  civilization, 
antithesis  of  Doric  hardness.  Sexual  joys  then  are  the 
summum  bonum  (Fragm.  1)  :  the  flower  of  the  perfect 
bloom  of  life:  when  these  have  passed  away:  woe  when 
painful  old  age  comes  on,  "  that  renders  ugly  even  the 
comely  man."  In  this  valuation  of  Life  man  is  more 
truly  a  mere  brother  of  bud  and  blossom  than  metaphors 
have  it.  There  is  no  ascent  to  higher  things,  no  rare- 
fying and  elevating  process  for  mere  animality.  "  We 

96 


VOICES  FROM  THE  LYRICAL  POETS  97 

grow  (Fragra.  2)  like  the  leaves  in  the  season  of  spring 
rich  in  blossoms,  when  abruptly  it  increaseth  by  the  gleams 
of  Sun;  these  resembling  do  we  for  a  cubit's  length  of 
time  enjoy  the  blossoms  of  maturity,  of  the  gods  knowing 
nor  evil  nor  good.  At  our  side  stand  the  black  Fates, 
the  one  holding  the  consummation  of  troublesome  old  age, 
and  the  other,  of  death;  small  grows  apace  the  fruition  of 
nature's  maturity,  to  that  extent  only  as  the  sun  is 
scattered  over  the  Earth.  But  when  this  consummation 
of  season  has  passed,  straightway  is  it  better  to  die  than  to 
live.  For  many  evils  come  up  in  his  soul.  At  one  time 
his  substance  is  ground  away,  and  Death  performs  his 
painful  deeds :  another  in  turn  has  to  do  without  offspring, 
yearning  most  after  which  he  goes  down  into  Eartli  to 
Hades.  Another  has  a  soul-wearing  disease  :  nor  is  there 
any  one  among  men  to  whom  Zeus  does  not  give  many 
evils. "  Gloom  in  the  main  —  and  other  sentiments  ancient 
anthologists  did  not  excerpt  from  his  works:  versified 
wantonness  it  seems  constituted  a  goodly  portion  of  his 
production. 

The  short  pithy  sayings  of  Phokylides  of  Miletos  (fl. 
ab.  537  B.C.)  had  much  vogue  among  the  Greeks,  and 
conformed  to  the  Ionic  spirit:  they  remind  the  modern 
reader  not  a  little  of  Hesiod's  saws  and  sentences.  Little 
is  left  for  our  purpose  in  the  small  remnant  that  has 
escaped  Time.  Fragment  9  (Bergk)  reveals  a  little  more 
precisely  the  true  meaning  of  that  elusive  Greek  term, 
a-cbcfrpwv  :  really  he  who  is  of  sound  mind,  sane.  The 
Ionic  sentence-maker  conceives  as  the  antithesis  of  this 
the  light-minded  (e\a<£/3oVoot),  so  that  the  virtue  of 
crci)<f>po<rvvr)  would  not  be  very  far  removed  from  the 
gravitas  of  the  Romans  :  to  be  well  balanced,  well  poised 
in  action:  nothing  very  deep  in  motive  of  conduct. 
Much  as  the  Greeks  vaunted  this  virtue,  it  cannot  fairly 
be  credited  to  the  Greek  nationality  as  a  whole.  The 
Roman  spirit,  up  to  the  agony  of  the  Republic,  may  lay 
claim  to  this  avoidance  of  excess  much  more  fairly.  (The 
Greeks  of  Magna  Graecia,  who  were  much  richer  than  those 


98  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

of  the  mother  country,  were,  to  the  Romans,  the  very  em- 
bodiment of  riotous  luxury;  see  the  phrase  pergrcecari  of 
the  age  of  Plautus.)  "In  the  Love  of  Justice,"  says  this 
versifying  proverbial  philosopher,  "  in  the  Love  of  Justice 
every  Virtue  is  comprehended." 


Theognis  of  Megara,  next  to  Solon,  was  probably  most 
highly  prized  by  the  Greeks  as  a  writer  of  sententious 
Elegy.  He  flourished  about  544  B.C.,  suffered  much,  as 
the  narrow  humanity  of  the  ancient  world  involved  keen 
suffering,  —  as  an  exile  from  his  native  land. 

He,  in  the  manner  of  aristocrats  of  birth  in  many  ages, 
reveals  the  spirit  of  pride  with  unreserved  decisiveness. 
These  families  are  the  good  :  there  were  probably  few 
Cotters  like  that  of  Burns  in  any  pagan  world,  and  the 
striving  after  the  seemly  was  even  more  emphasized  by 
the  fact  that  every  social  valuation  involved  the  institu- 
tion of  the  slavery  of  man. 

"Rams  we  seek  and  asses,  O  Kyrnos,  and  horses,  of 
noble  breed,  but  with  ludicrous  inconsistency  many  a 
noble  desires  to  mate  with  a  rich  wife  of  mean  extrac- 
tion" (v.  183  «^.). 

"  The  money  (197  «<?.)  which  comes  to  a  man  from 
Zeus  and  with  justice  and  cleanly,  always  abides  with 
him." 

(Many  verses  from  Solon's  collections  have  crept  into 
this  body  of  verse, — e.g.  731  «<?<?.)  Some  of  the  most 
stirring  lines  seem  wrested  from  his  very  heart  by  the 
bitter  experience  of  a  father,  lines  penned  long  before 
"King  Lear"  was  written  by  the  greatest  poet  of  all 
(273  sqq.*)  :  "  But  the  worst  of  all  among  men,  more  griev- 
ous than  death  and  all  diseases  is  this  :  when  you  have 
reared  children  and  furnished  to  them  all  things  fitting, 
and  stored  money  for  them,  having  suffered  many  trouble- 
some things,  they  hate  their  father  and  curse  him  that 
he  may  perish,  and  they  abhor  him  as  they  would  an 
approaching  beggar."  Erring  and  sinful  is  mankind  in 
its  very  essence,  you  cannot  (325  sqq.)  square  yourself 


VOICES  FROM  THE  LYRICAL  POETS  99 

and  be  friendly  to  your  friends  if  you  were  to  nurse 
anger  for  missteps  of  your  friends.  Sins  (a//.a/3To>Xai) 
among  men  will  follow,  will  be  intrinsically  associated 
with  mortals  :  "  but  the  gods  are  unwilling  to  bear  them  " 
(328).  Excellence  is  attained  if  you  follow  the  middle 
course,  and  avoid  extremes,  —  excellence,  so  difficult  to 
seize. 

Let  me  reward  my  friends  and  avenge  myself  on  mine 
enemies,  I  ask  nothing  further  —  but  let  the  very  words 
come  forward,  for  it  is  here  that  we  behold  the  very 
essence  of  the  natural  man  :  "  May  Zeus  (v.  337)  grant 
me  requital  on  my  friends  and  on  my  private  foes,  while 
I  am  to  have  greater  power  (for  either  work).  And  thus 
I  would  seem  to  myself  to  be  a  god  among  men  if  the  fate 
of  death  were  to  overtake  me,  after  I  had  achieved  my 
requital"  (cf.  v.  869  8qq.~).  He  would  drink  the  black 
blood  of  the  men  who  have  impoverished  him.  "Well 
beguile  thou  with  fair  words  thy  private  enemy :  but 
when  he  comes  to  be  in  your  power,  avenge  thyself  upon 
him,  making  no  pretence  whatever."  The  problem  of 
prosperous  wickedness  (a  note  so  familiar  in  the  book 
of  Psalms)  (although  Bergk  suggests  here  that  Solon 
may  have  penned  the  lines),  373 :  "  Dear  Zeus,  I  wonder 
at  thee :  for  thou  rulest  over  all,  having  honor  thyself 
and  great  power ;  and  thou  knowest  well  the  mind  of 
men  and  the  spirit  of  each  one :  and  thy  power  is  the 
highest  of  all,  O  King.  How  then,  O  son  of  Kronos, 
does  thy  mind  dare  to  hold  wicked  men  in  the  same  es- 
timation as  the  righteous  one,  whether  the  mind  be  turned 
to  self-control,  or  whether  men  turn  towards  insolence, 
obedient  to  unrighteous  deeds  ?"  (cf.  743  sqq.*).  Often 
cited  in  later  anthologies  were  these  lines  (v.  425)  :  "  Best 
of  all  for  earthly  men  is  it,  not  to  have  come  into  exist- 
ence at  all,  nor  to  have  beheld  the  rays  of  the  keenly 
gleaming  sun  :  but  having  been  born  as  speedily  as  possi- 
ble to  pass  through  the  portals  of  Hades  and  to  lie,  with 
a  great  mass  of  earth  heaped  over  one."  There  is  a 
lengthly  warning  against  drunkenness  (480  sqq.^).  No  one 
can  be  sophrdn  then.  Satiety  (/co/ao?)  has  undone  more 


100  TESTBIONIUM  ANDLE 

men  than  Hunger  (605).  Intelligence  must  dominate  ap- 
petite (631  sqq.)  if  thou  wouldest  not  lie  in  great  distress. 
Some  form  of  excellence  or  prosperity  arete  still  is,  not 
yet  any  definite  or  intrinsic  virtue  at  all :  "  Prosperous 
would  I  be,  and  (653)  a  friend  to  the  immortal  gods  :  no 
other  aret£  do  I  yearn  for."  As  right  conduct  has  not  at 
all  any  religious  character,  but  is  largely  determined  by 
the  civic  relations  of  a  man,  we  do  not  wonder  when  we 
read  that  the  exceptional  virtue  of  Rbadamanthys  (who 
was  ultimately  created  by  Zeus  a  judge  of  departed  souls) 
consisted  in  his  exceptional  possession  of  sdphrosijnG,  i.e. 
sobriety  and  sanity  (v.  701),  a  very  moderate  measure  of 
moral  perfection,  perfect  control  of  his  own  faculties,  uni- 
form avoidance  of  excesses  and  extremes.  Excellence 
and  Comeliness  are  rarely  associated  in  the  same  person  : 
"  Happy  (v.  934)  is  he  who  had  allotted  to  him  both  of 
these."  "  All  honor  him,  both  young  and  old  yield  to 
him  in  place.  When  aging  he  is  eminent  among  his 
fellow-citizens,  nor  is  any  one  willing  to  do  him  harm  in 
either  the  sphere  of  reverence  or  justice."  It  is  the  true 
spirit  of  the  Greeks. 

The  latter  part  of  the  bequeathed  verse  of  Theognis 
is  of  that  erotic  kind  which  was  cherished  almost  exclu- 
sively among  the  Greeks.  It  is  grave  that  the  moralizing 
verse  should  have  proceeded  from  the  same  pen  as  the 
other,  but  it  is  graver  that  Greek  antiquity  should  have 
thought  fit  to  transcribe  and  transmit.  It  is  still  more 
portentous  that  scholars  like  Bergk  should  ignore,  in 
their  surveys,  this  ulcerous  cancer  of  the  Greek  people. 
To  say  that  this  reveals  the  normal  early  manhood  of  a 
typical  Greek,  seems  fair  enough.  In  Solon's  case  the 
contrast  between  youth  and  the  moral  earnestness  of  ad- 
vanced age  is  at  least  inspiring  and,  in  a  measure,  whole- 
some. How  vague  and  unmeaning  is  the  striving  to 
endow  Zeus  with  the  attributes  of  Providence,  Justice, 
and  Righteousness,  when  the  poet  justifies  himself  by  the 
legend  of  Ganymede  whom  "  the  King  of  the  Immortals 
was  enamoured  of  and  ravished  him  away  to  Olympus," 


VOICES  FROM  THE  LYRICAL  POETS  101 

etc.  (1345  sqq.~).  The  sesthetical  phrases  of  Winckelraann 
and  all  his  disciples  gloss  over  and  ignore  this  practical 
result  of  the  Hellenic  cult  of  beauty.  For  if  all  the 
higher  endowment  of  man  is  to  find  its  summum  bonum  in 
the  worship  of  the  Beautiful,  if,  as  Winekelnaann  (Vol.  4, 
p.  72,  ed.  1811)  says,  it  was  eminently  worthy  of  human 
conception  of  sensuous  deities,  and  very  charming  for  the 
imagination  to  typify  the  condition  of  a  perpetual  youth 
and  the  springtime  of  Life  —  what  follows?  Why  then 
is  it  that  the  Greek  spirit  has  after  all  revealed  some 
moral  sense  in  creating  the  types  of  the  Satyrs  and  the 
Sileni?  In  Winckelmann's  case,  as  always,  we  see  the 
dyer's  hand  soundly  infected  with  the  dye  it  deals  in,  and 
that  moral  obtuseness  or  strabism  revealed,  which  vitiates 
so  much  of  mythological  writing.  Theognis  certainly  re- 
veals that  there  was  essentially  no  genuine  progression  from 
the  Homeric  level  of  Religion,  and  that  the  close  practical 
relation  between  pulchritude  of  form  and  unnatural  lust 
passed  in  Greek  life  not  merely  as  a  matter  of  course,  but 
as  an  essentially  vernal  thing,  a  complement  of,  an  inci- 
dent of,  Hebe.  It  is  vain  to  bring  in  the  phraseology  of  a 
pure  and  romantic  love  between  the  sexes,  ending  in  life- 
long companionship — it  is  futile,  I  say,  on  the  part  of 
modern  writers  to  gloss  over  the  Venus  Canina  in  this 
manner.  The  fact  is  that  in  the  course  of  time  classical 
antiquity  degraded,  in  its  interpretation,  friendships  like 
those  of  Achilles  and  Patroklos,1  for  instance,  and  the 
essentially  low  level  of  Greek  myths,  held  and  perpetuated 
in  the  very  valleys  where  they  had  originated,  defied  all 
efforts  at  moral  elevation,  and  triumphed  over  every  at- 
tempt at  spiritual  refinement. 

There  is  an  almost  irresistible  inclination  in  modern 
man  to  abstract  from  the  exquisite  lines  chiselled  by  the 
great  sculptors  of  Greece,  and  to  project  into  Hellas  itself 
the  subjective  simulacra  and  phantoms  of  absolute  perfec- 
tion, which  psychological  process,  fortified  by  a  little  con- 
tact with  literary  productions  of  exceptional  originality 
and  vigorous  simplicity,  endows  the  Greek  nationality 

1  Roscher,  Lexikon,  v.  Achilleus,  Col.  43. 


102  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

with  a  fatuous  and  utterly  unhistorical  ne  plus  ultra  of 
elevation.  Chaucer  and  Pepys's  Diary  present  a  goodly 
part  of  the  actual  Britain  of  their  day  ;  but  how  futile 
would  it  be  to  abstract  from  the  rare  company  alone 
whose  marble  or  bronze  images  in  Westminster  and  St. 
Paul  mark  the  gratitude  or  admiration  of  Britannia,  and 
conceive  such  a  Britain  at  large  ! 


The  Iambic  writers  exhibit  the  very  abandonment  of 
that  Greek  virtue  of  self-control  and  sanity,  and  even  in 
passing  amid  their  fragments  it  is  often  necessary  to  step 
warily.  But  few  are  the  remnants  available  for  this  book. 
The  sharp  and  bitter  verse  in  the  very  swiftness  of  its 
metrical  form  cleaves  to  its  themes  as  the  skin  to  the  flesh. 
Simonides  of  Amorgos  (Fragm.  1)  thus  writes  gloomily  on 
human  life  at  large :  "  My  son,  'tis  Zeus  of  heavy  thunder 
who  holds  the  end  of  all  that  is,  and  places  as  he  wills ; 
but  sense  does  not  attend  the  human  kind,  but  ephemeral 
we  live  like  grazing  cattle  alway,  knowing  nothing  how 
God  will  bring  each  one  to  his  end.  'Tis  hope  and  confi- 
dence that  nurtures  all  as  they  indulge  in  vain  impulse. 
Some  abide  the  coming  of  a  day  and  others  the  circular 
movement  of  years.  Next  year  each  mortal  thinks  he 
will  come  close  to  wealth  and  blessings.  But  old  age  un- 
lovely outstrips  the  one  in  seizing  him  before  he  reaches 
his  goal ;  other  mortals  are  destroyed  by  grievous  illness, 
still  others,  overcome  by  god  of  war  doth  Hades  send  to 
murky  realms.  And  others  on  the  deep  by  gale  are  wildly 
driven,  and  in  the  myriad  billows  of  the  purple  deep  they 
die  .  .  .  and  these  attacked  the  noose  with  grievous  end, 
and  self -despatched  leave  the  light  of  Helios.  No  form  of 
evil  then  is  wanting.  ..." 

Precisely  the  same  personality  stands  revealed  in  the 
famous  poem  on  women  and  their  types;  we  think  of 
^Esop  when  we  read  of  her  whose  type  is  (Fragm.  7)  the 
long-haired  ass,  whose  home  is  filthy  and  disorderly.  The 
vixen  hears  of  every  one's  evils  and  troubles,  even  those 
of  her  betters.  Another  runs  aimlessly  hither  and  thither 


VOICES  FROM  THE  LYRICAL  POETS  103 

as  do  the  dogs  in  Eastern  towns.  Another  merely  eats 
and  eats,  her  sole  accomplishment.  Another  changes  in 
her  moods  like  the  surface  of  the  sea.  Another  is  likened 
by  this  bitter  writer  of  iambic  verse  to  the  weasel,  insati- 
able of  sensuality  and  a  desperate  thief,  who  will  not  even 
spare  things  destined  for  the  altar.  Another  is  a  proud, 
high-stepping  steed,  all  for  finery  and  dress  :  she  needs  a 
king  for  her  husband.  An  ape  another  is,  so  ugly,  so  ma- 
licious, and  so  mischievous^.  One  noble  type  alone  is  given 
us,  it  is  the  bee.  One  hardly  would  credit  woman  with  a 
soul,  in  fact ;  from  Hesiod  to  Menander  resounds  this  low 
and  bitter  note,  a  social,  a  political  necessity  then,  but 
little  more.  Where,  then,  is  the  Greek  Frauenlol  ?  Read 
the  extracts  in  the  anthology  of  Stobseus,  the  sixty-four 
extracts,  among  which  no  less  than  thirty-five  are  from 
the  pen  of  Euripides.  That  third  leaf  in  the  trifolium 
of  Attic  tragedy,  intensely  human  as  he  is,  has  come  down 
almost  to  the  lowest  rung  of  the  ladder  from  the  high 
level  of  Homer.  No  age  of  chivalry  there,  before  Troy 
or  Thebes,  however,  in  spite  of  the  shallow  plausibility  of 
Mahaffy's  pen  strokes ;  he  is  essentially  the  milliner  who 
tricks  out  his  puppets  with  a  finery  unknown  to  the  saner 
view  of  clarified  and  critical  vision. 

Even  the  noble  figure  of  Penelope  the  vile  spirit  of  the 
later  Greeks  dragged  down  from  the  superb  elevation  of 
the  Odyssey.  Her  husband  is  probably  the  true  imper- 
sonation of  your  genuine  Greek  ;  cunning,  adroit,  perse- 
vering, always  riding  on  the  crest  of  all  the  billows  of 
emergency  or  circumstance,  but  she  is  noblest  womanhood, 
whether  as  wife  or  mother.  There  is  recorded  one  play, 
"  Penelope,"  in  the  annals  of  Old  Attic  Comedy.  She 
was  also  said  to  have  borne  a  son  by  Hermes  during  the 
long  absence  of  her  husband,  or,  according  to  a  still  more 
repulsive  fabrication,  she  became  mother  to  a  child,  of 
which  all  the  suitors  were  the  fathers.  Thus,  with  all 
the  canonization  of  Homer,  the  Greeks  honored  neither 
the  heroine  of  the  Iliad,  for  which  dishonor  there  was 
more  warrant,  nor  the  lady  of  Ithaca. 


104  TESTBfONIUM  ANIM^l 

Indeed,  before  we  pass  on  to  the  puzzling  and  difficult 
theme  of  Sappho,  the  poetess  and  music-teacher  of  Lesbos, 
it  may  be  well  to  look  at  a  few  essential  features  of  Greek 
womanhood.  So  young  were  the  brides  and  so  exclusively 
was  marriage  an  economical  and  political  settlement,  that 
the  seeking  out,  and  the  personal  choice  and  deeper  satis- 
faction of  ultra-physical  comradeship,  was  utterly  excluded. 
But  I  believe  I  will  best  serve  the  interests  of  historical 
truth  and  of  my  work  if  I  simply  transfer  §  29  of  C.  Fr. 
Hermann's  "  Private  Antiquities  of  the  Greeks."  That 
scholar,  in  his  wonderful  erudition,  preserved  a  degree  of 
equipoise  and  sanity  rare  among  the  great  German  classi- 
cists of  the  nineteenth  century,  almost  all  of  whom,  in 
their  own  generation,  were  enslaved  by  the  practice  of 
absolute  valuation  of  classical  things  and  themes. 

"  In  the  nature  of  the  case  indeed  the  commonwealths 
of  Greece  were  compelled  to  lay  no  little  stress  on  the 
preservation  of  houses  and  the  matrimonial  unions  of  their 
citizens.  This  was  necessary  even  on  account  of  certain 
ordinances,  civil  and  religious,  which  were  founded  upon 
the  family.  In  some  communities  we  find  that  this  con- 
cern of  the  states  was  extended  to  statutes  aimed  at  un- 
married men.  Still,  by  such  means  the  moral  character 
of  matrimony  but  too  easily  was  merged  in  the  legal,  and 
as  adultery  was  considered  primarily  as  a  disturbance  of 
domestic  peace  which  permitted  the  offended  party  to 
execute  summary  and  immediate  vengeance,  so  the  out- 
raging of  a  virgin  was  considered  merely  as  a  usurpation 
of  alien  rights,  which  usurpation  was  entirely  atoned  for 
by  subsequent  marriage.  For  the  same  reason  concubi- 
nage in  the  estimation  of  the  Greeks  had  but  this  one 
offensive  feature,  that  the  offspring  therefrom  lacked  the 
civil  or  legal  advantages  of  statutory  wedlock.  ..." 

"  As  to  what  concerns  the  courtesans,  who  in  manifold 
gradations  either  personally  or  in  the  service  of  another's 
pursuit  of  gain  made  a  trade  of  the  satisfaction  of  sexual 
desires,  it  is  true  here  that  both  the  general  contempt  for 
any  mercenary  trade  united  with  the  particular  ignominy 
of  the  courtesan's  pursuit  joined  to  establish  a  stain  which 


• 


VOICES  FROM  THE  LYRICAL  POETS  105 

found  expression  in  many  exceptional  laws  directed 
against  this  class;  but  the  practical  use  which  the  mascu- 
line sex  made  of  their  advances  was  subject  at  most  to  the 
considerations  of  civil  prudence,  while  the  commonwealth 
and  social  custom  rather  encouraged  than  curbed  it :  and 
in  the  same  measure  as  their  freedom  from  the  restraints 
of  female  decorum  made  it  possible  for  some  courtesans 
to  approach  more  nearly  to  male  society  in  refinement 
and  in  the  sharing  of  cultural  movements  —  in  the  same 
measure  that  contempt  gave  way  to  an  indulgence  and  a 
recognition,  of  which  the  first  intellects  of  Greece  were  not 
ashamed."  (And  so  Socrates  himself — Xenophon,  "Memo- 
rabilia," 3,  12  —  discusses  with  the  beautiful  Theodote 
how  best  she  might  manipulate  and  hold  her  lovers.) 
"  Still  more  early  the  inadequacy  of  domestic  intercourse 
with  the  female  sex  had  endowed  the  love  of  men  with  an 
importance  in  which  this  relation  appeared  outright  as  a 
preeminence  of  Greek  freedom  and  culture  above  other 
nations,  difficult  though  it  was  there  to  maintain  the 
slender  line  of  demarcation  which  separated  it  from  ad- 
mitted debauchery  and  perversion  of  nature.  It  was 
legally  encouraged  by  most  of  the  states  and  considered  the 
object  of  such  love  as  enviable  (Nepos,  preface  of  Chap. 
4),  and  even  where  the  statute  threatened  the  voluntary 
degradation  of  the  latter  with  deserved  ignominy,  the 
statute  granted  protection  to  the  fair  youth  only  against 
violence,  whereas  the  corrupter  found  in  the  success  of 
his  suit  and  in  the  consent  of  his  victim  ample  excuse." 
The  Gottingen  Scholar  then  proceeds  (in  §  30)  :  "  Hence 
it  is  easily  understood  that  it  was  a  necessary  consequence 
in  Greece  that  matrimony  was  considered  as  barely  better 
than  a  necessary  evil,  and  certainly  was  treated  merely  as 
transaction  in  law,  the  moral  features  of  which  were  due 
not  so  much  to  the  personal  affection  of  bride  and  groom 
as  rather  to  the  general  importance  bestowed  by  law  itself 
upon  this  union  of  the  sexes  to  provide  the  foundations  of 
civil  society.  As  for  the  virgin  at  least,  every  personal 
motive  was  removed  by  her  domestic  seclusion,  or  if  in- 
deed this  barrier  had  been  broken  through  by  the  occasion 


106  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

of  a  public  festival,  never  was  there  any  question,  but  the 
girl  accepted  the  husband  with  whom  her  parents  directly 
or  by  means  of  a  stranger's  mediation  had  concluded  the 
contract  concerning  her  future  ;  and  this  contract  then 
constituted  the  betrothal  which  the  Greeks  considered  as 
the  essential  condition  of  a  legal  association  of  matrimony." 
But  these  exact  and  historically  well- fortified  delineations 
of  Hermann  cannot  be  cited  any  further. 

Let  us  now  approach  the  remnants  of  Sappho.  The 
mere  scanning  of  these  sometimes  reminds  me  of  the  play- 
ing on  a  chordless  piano  for  the  sake  of  the  fingering  and 
tempo:  at  all  events,  the  Greek  lays  or  chants  have  passed 
to  the  limbo  of  nevermore,  in  spite  of  Horace's  imitations. 
Of  these  fragments,  but  two  are  large  enough  that  we  too 
may  grasp  or  lay  hold  of  at  least  some  ground  for  stand- 
ing with  the  Hellenic  world  in  its  praise  or  high  valuation 
of  this  gifted  woman.  Love:  what  a  theme!  But  how 
raised  above  the  stars,  how  dragged  down  to  the  very 
depths  of  Tartarus!  If  anywhere,  here  it  should  be  re- 
vealed, if  the  Greek  soul  was  not  after  all  earthy,  or 
whether  in  the  strongest  impulse  of  man  there  was  any 
admixture  of  aught  but  body  and  physical  craving,  to  be 
satisfied  in  the  only  way  in  which  mere  animality  is  to  be 
satisfied;  whether,  at  bottom,  Love  and  Lust  were  inde- 
terminable affections  of  man;  whether  they  were  not 
perhaps  convertible  terms.  As  for  Aphrodite,  the  coarse 
idols  of  older  Cyprian  art  which  emphasize  mere  sex  and 
sexuality,  as  for  this  personification —  it  remained  the  gross 
thingwhich  at  bottom  is  treated  with  contempt  by  the  bright 
and  fearless  poet  who  in  the  Iliad  manipulated  the  Olympus 
in  his  own  way  —  a  personification  essentially  incapable 
of  serious  elevation:  typifying  an  impulse  powerful  and 
potential  for  a  myriad  of  consequences.  This  "  Kypris," 
then,  was  plentifully,  with  a  wealth  of  consummately 
felicitous  epithets  and  in  language  positively  pulsating 
with  passion,  invoked,  over  and  over  again,  by  Sappho  of 
Lesbos  (fl.  ab.  590  B.C.).  That  a  middle-aged  woman, 
mother  and  widow,  should  compose  such  verse,  puzzled 
the  Greeks  more  and  more  so  as  time  passed  by.  No  less 


VOICES  FROM  THE  LYRICAL  POETS  107 

than  six  comedy  writers  of  Athens  wrote  plays  on  Sappho 
bearing  her  name.  And  no  wonder,  if  they  made  good 
sport  of  the  paternity  of  Hercules,  and  of  the  wiles  that 
deceived  the  good  and  faithful  Alkmene,  why  not  of 
Sappho  ?  If  the  very  birth  of  Athena  was  fair  sport  for 
them,  though  she  was  the  tutelary  deity  of  the  Athenians, 
why  should  they  have  refrained  from  the  Lesbian  com- 
poser? The  very  development  of  the  full  powers  of  a 
woman's  personality  was  almost  a  challenge  to  the  Greek 
spirit.  Aphrodite,  "  weaver  of  wiles  "  (SoXoTrXo'/co?),  I 
said,  was  invoked  in  these  odes:  wiles  to  attain  sexual 
gratification,  for  of  romance  and  chivalry  there  is  nothing 
to  be  found  (cf.  Fragm.  52, 130).  She  loves  her  daughter 
Kleis  with  intensity  (Fragm.  85),  for  her  she  would  not 
accept  the  wealth  of  Lydia,  and  still  the  passionate  tone 
of  love  —  for  whom  ?  Her  very  soul  borders  on  insanity 
in  the  frenzy  of  her  love-sickness  (Fragm.  1,  v.  28).  Per- 
suasion is  to  lead  the  beloved  one  to  her  and  it  is  a  girl, 
too,  who  now  spurns  presents,  and  flees  from  Sappho. 
What  accomplishment  or  attainment  the  "  Kypris  "  is  to 
work  for  the  poetess  we  know  not;  for  this,  however 
(reXeoroy!),  she  prays. 

The  other  complete  poem  is  an  enumeration,  physio- 
logical, let  it  be  said,  of  the  symptoms  of  erotic  ecstasy, 
an  enumeration  of  symptoms  roused  in  the  music  mistress 
by  a  girl,  one  of  her  pupils  it  would  seem.  Other  Lesbian 
ladies  seem  also  to  have  given  instruction  how  to  sing  and 
play  on  the  lyre.  They  also  composed  bridal  songs.  I 
will  not  go  on  to  the  charges  made  against  Sappho  by  the 
Greeks  themselves.  Had  we  the  entire  nine  books  of  her 
verse,  we  would  be  in  a  far  better  case.  Theognis  bor- 
rowed her  "  weaver  of  wiles."  Quintilian  did  not  con- 
sider her  verse  fit  to  form  a  part  of  regular  literary 
instruction  in  the  schools  for  Roman  pupils.  We  advance 
little  in  our  estimation  by  chewing  over  the  Laodicean 
phrase  of  "  unsuitable  for  the  young  person,"  or  some  such 
current  form  of  eclectic  morality.  Is  it  the  beginning  of 
the  particular  form  of  Perversion  and  the  Pervert  ever 
after  associated  with  the  very  name  of  Lesbos  ?  Scholars 


108  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

like  C.  F.  Hermann,  Welcker,  Bernhardy,  enter  the  lists 
as  her  champions.  Poor  champions.  For  they  speak  of 
the  perversion  of  the  male  sex  often  in  a  semi-apologetic 
manner  —  a  terrible  stain  that  cannot  be  palliated.  We 
may  well  doubt  with  Colonel  Mure  as  to  what  "limb- 
loosing  Eros  "  can  mean  in  the  verse  of  Sappho.  Her  far- 
famed  champion,  Welcker,  actually  believes  in  some  rare 
and  radiant  youth,  Phaon,  for  whom  the  poetess  took  her 
own  life.  One  thing  is  quite  definite  :  let  us  remove 
fancies  of  ideal  love  from  our  conception  of  the  Greeks. 
If  we  would  like  to  conceive  them  loftily,  that  is  quite 
intelligible  :  unfortunately  the  data  of  literary  tradition 
permit  us  in  no  wise  to  do  so,  as  far  as  Love  is  concerned 
and  the  particular  meaning  of  erotic  has  been  aptly  lodged 
in  this  Greek  word.  I  append  a  few  lines  never  yet  done 
into  English,  I  believe,  of  Bernhardy 's  ("  Hist,  of  Gr.  Lit."): 
"  delicate  and  confidential  was  the  intercourse  (of  Sappho) 
with  virgins  beautiful  and  susceptible,  partly  also  faithful 
(in  not  changing  their  lessons?)  who  entered  into  the 
presence  of  Sappho  "  (the  very  phrase  bespeaks  the  pro- 
fessional reverence  of  the  typical  classicist) — for  what 
end,  do  you  think,  dear  reader?  To  learn  from  her  art 
(i.  e.  how  to  play  on  the  lyre)  "  and  wisdom  "  (what  wis- 
dom ?),  the  sorrows  and  joys  of  Love  ?  Elsewhere  the 
scholar  of  Halle  utters  the  following  nonsense  (p.  672): 
But  Sappho  has  mitigated  the  bold  sensuality  of  her  race 
(i.e.  the  ^Eolic)  by  the  delicate  fragrance  (Dufi)  of  ten- 
der womanliness.  Where?  How?  I  will  not  pass  on 
before  I  have  cited  fair  and  fit  words,  written  in  1857, 
and  published  in  the  Rheinisches  Museum  for  that  year, 
an  essay  entitled  :  "  Sappho  and  the  Ideal  Love  of  the 
Greeks."  This  judgment  of  Mure  has  my  cordial  appro- 
bation (p.  577) :  "  One  who  has  written  so  much  on  the 
Greeks  and  to  the  same  effect  as  the  author  of  these 
remarks,  can  hardly  be  accused  of  undervaluing  their 
genius.  But  no  admiration  for  their  great  qualities  has 
ever  blinded  me  to  the  defects  of  their  social  condition. 
Of  those  defects  the  worst,  the  dark  spot  which  sheds  a 
gloom  over  all  their  glorious  attributes,  is  their  unnatural 


VOICES  FROM  THE  LYRICAL  POETS  109 

vice.  That  so  obvious  an  impulse,  the  mere  suspicion  of 
which  attaching  to  a  man,  causes  him,  in  most  parts  at 
least  of  modern  Europe,  to  be  shunned  as  a  pest  to  society, 
should  have  been  so  mixed  up  with  the  physical  constitu- 
tion of  a  whole  nation  as  to  become  a  little  less  powerful 
instinct  than  the  natural  one  between  the  sexes  ;  that  its 
indulgence  should  have  been  regulated  by  law ;  that  in 
the  extension  of  metaphysical  science,  all  speculation  on 
the  passion  of  love,  its  principle  or  influence,  would,  in  the 
leading  schools  of  philosophy,  have  been  concentrated 
around  this  detestable  impulse,  as  the  mode  of  that  pas- 
sion most  honorable  to  enlightened  men, —  all  this 
constitutes  so  monstrous,  to  the  Christian  moralist  so 
revolting,  an  abnormity  in  the  history  of  our  species  as 
can  barely  be  reconciled  with  the  general  scheme  of  provi- 
dence, when  viewed  as  a  humiliation  to  which  this  tran- 
scendently  gifted  race  was  subjected,  in  order  to  place 
them  on  a  level  with  the  rest  of  mankind." 

And  while  the  poetess  addressed  her  glowing  verse  to 
girls,  her  fellow-countryman,  to  use  the  phrase  of  Quin- 
tilian,  "  lowered  himself  to  erotic  verse "  (ad  amores  de- 
scendif),  and  we  may  pass  on. 

Anakreon  of  Teos  (fl.  ab.  531),  a  contemporary  of  the 
times  when  Persia  rapidly  came  forward  as  the  world 
power,  and  when  autocrats  ruled,  probably,  in  the  greater 
number  of  Greek  communities.  His  verse  glorified  the 
boy  favorites  at  such  courts,  as  at  that  of  Polykrates  of 
Samos  (Smerdis,  Kleobulos,  Bathyllos).  "He  loves  all 
the  comely  ones,  and  extols  them  all,"  says  an  ancient 
critic,  Maximus  of  Tyre.  It  was  all  in  the  service  of 
Aphrodite,  a  religion,  if  we  may  force  this  term  to  such 
use,  of  infinite  convenience,  almost  as  comfortable  as 
Rousseau's  pure  nature,  a  service,  I  say,  in  such  worship, 
where  Eros  also  is  much  named,  a  name  much  bestowed 
later,  at  Rome,  on  Greek  slave  boys.  "A  great  and  bold 
design  did  the  Grecian  world  undertake,"  said  Cicero  (in  a 
citation  from  some  lost  work)  ("  Lactantius'  Institutiones," 
1,  20,  14),  "  in  that  it  set  up  images  of  Cupids  and  Loves 
in  the  Gymnasia."  An  allusion  more  deeply  and  gravely 


110  TESTIMONIUM  ANIMvE 

elaborated  by  one  of  the  best  Greeks  of  his  or  any  time, 
Plutarch  of  Chaeronea,  in  his  "  Amatorius,"  cited  above  in 
Chapter  3.  And  what,  pray,  can  we  say  of  a  religion, 
however  ecstatically  we  may  call  it  a  religion  of  the  beau- 
tiful, which  could  not  be  brought  into  any  sort  of  harmony 
with  any  postulates  of  moral  law,  nay,  which  as  at  Corinth 
(and  Babylon)  constituted  and  appointed  a  divine  worship 
consisting  in  acts  of  impurity?  The  sestheticians  from 
those  times  to  the  present  have  almost  uniformly  acquired 
a  curious  callosity  in  that  portion  of  their  souls  where 
moral  judgment  is  to  utter  itself,  and  when  brought  into 
uncomfortable  narrows  of  controversy,  fall  back  on  a 
denial,  direct  or  implied,  of  moral  law.  It  is  an  old 
matter  :  "  Of  all  things  is  man  the  measure,"  said  Pro- 
tagoras the  Sophist ;  "  the  difference  of  conceptions  as  to 
what  is  permissible,"  says  Welcker  (" Kleine  Schriften" 
I,  256).  In  the  miserable  combination  of  his  gray  hairs 
with  the  same  old  wretched  themes  and  concerns,  Anak- 
reon  is  about  as  cheerful  and  as  sincere  as  one  who  chews 
apples  of  Sodom  and  pretends  they  are  from  Eden.  Solon's 
old-age  verse  has  a  truer  ring,  as  we  saw. 

Teuffel  of  Tubingen  in  a  popular  lecture  full  of  con- 
straint, of  euphemism  and  palliation  ("  Studien  und  Char- 
akteristiken"  etc.,  1871,  p.  73)  is,  at  least,  fair  enough  to 
call  the  amatory  poems  of  the  Greeks  eine  Sumpf- 
pflanze,  a  plant  flourishing  in  morass  ;  but  we  may  say 
at  once,  where,  in  classic  Greek  literature,  is  there  any 
other?  In  vain  will  we  look,  then,  in  Greek  literature 
for  women  like  Shakespeare's  Miranda,  Isabella,  Beatrice, 
Portia,  Rosalind,  Katherine,  Helena,  Olivia,  and  the  others 
—  women  loving,  loving  with  faithful  and  honorable  love, 
women  with  personalities  so  rich  and  so  superbly  endowed, 
with  moral  splendor  illumined,  and  withal  so  human,  that 
we  love  them  all,  without  the  first  concern  or  curiosity 
as  to  their  complexion  or  eyes,  or  eyebrows  or  straight 
noses,  or  other  transitory  gift  of  the  Graces.  For  the 
higher  concerns  of  mankind  one  of  these  women  of 
Shakespeare  is  of  worth  and  price  so  great,  that  if  all 
the  Aphrodites  of  Melos,  or  Capua  or  Knidos,  were  sunk 


VOICES  FROM  THE  LYRICAL  POETS  111 

into  the  sea  where  it  is  deepest,  together  with  the  cow- 
eyed  and  morose  Hera  of  Ludovisi  or  other  provenience, 
— if  this  should  eventuate  as  a  condition  that  Shakespeare 
should  not  perish  from  the  possession  of  our  human  kind, 
—  I  for  one  would  contemplate  that  submersion  with  much 
equanimity.  Such  women,  I  say,  are  not  to  be  found  in 
the  wide  range  of  Greek  letters,  because  they  were  not  in 
Greek  life  and  mode  of  living. 


Pindar  of  Thebes  (522-442)  ranks  as  the  greatest  of 
the  Nine  Canonic  Lyrists  of  Greece  :  his  poems  in  part 
survive,  his  melodies  or  lays  have  perished.  His  odes  of 
victory  for  those  Greeks  who  were  able  to  remunerate  so 
eminent  a  poet  and  composer  have  been  transmitted.  Few 
things  are  so  exclusively  the  domain  of  a  narrow  number 
of  scholars  as  the  technology  of  his  metres,  few  things 
as  utterly  impossible  of  a  renaissance  as  Pindar's  victory 
odes,  few  if  any  works  of  the  ancient  world  so  untrans- 
latable as  the  choral  lyrics  of  Pindar.  But  our  quest  is 
not  in  the  hard  and  well-beaten  footpath  of  literary  val- 
uation. 

The  visible  palpable  glory  of  physical  excellence  and 
endurance,  the  fame  of  Pan-hellenic  observation  and  praise, 
a  renown  not  less  dear  to  the  victor  and  his  kin  and  com- 
monwealth than  portrait  statues  of  marble  or  bronze, — 
these  things  are  in  and  over  all  these  compositions.  Great 
national  services  had  not  been  earned  by  many  Greeks 
before  the  Persian  wars,  but  all  the  more  each  community 
clung  to  myth  and  legend  connecting  its  aristocracy  with 
some  one  of  the  gods.  These  present  achievements  are 
extolled  as  a  true  confirmation  of  ancestry  and  mythical 
feats.  In  the  sunset  even  of  this  Hellenic  world  the  con- 
tests at  Olympia,  together  with  the  Eleusinian  mysteries 
in  Attica,  were  designated  by  one  of  the  closest  observers 
as  the  concerns  of  an  especial  tutelary  divine  providence 
(Pausanias,  5,  10,  1).  It  is,  then,  hi  the  main  the  eulogy 
of  strength,  wealth,  glory,  and  social  culture  which  per- 
vades these  odes.  Aretd  (virtus)  in  Pindar  is  simply 


112  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

Excellence,  some  one  form  of  outdoing  one's  fellows,  an 
eminence  of  mind,  body,  or  fortune  —  power,  in  short.  In 
the  dependence  of  the  individual  excellence  on  the  favor 
of  some  specific  god  or  gods,  Pindar  stands  on  the  whole 
on  the  essential  basis  of  the  Homeric  Epics:  it  is  in  a 
certain  way  the  last  golden  appearance  in  lofty  letters  of 
the  Homeric  Olympians.  The  critics  have  observed  (any 
reader  may  easily  do  so,  it  is  obvious  enough)  that  Pin- 
dar tried  to  deprive  myths  of  ignoble  elements.  The  tra- 
ditional ecstasy  drove  Professor  Christ  to  call  Pindar  a 
"  sacred  singer  filled  with  deep  religiosity,"  if  any  Greek  re- 
ligiosity could  be  essentially  lofty  or  deep.  Bernhardy 
speaks  of  "  religious  consecration "  which  made  Pindar 
strong.  But  one  could  not  endow  the  legend  of  Ganymede 
with  purity,  one  could  not  explain  away  the  sense  in  which 
it  was  held  in  the  wide  range  of  the  Hellenic  world.  The 
naive  carnality  of  Apollo  when  his  concupiscence  was 
directed  at  the  innocent  nymph  Koronis,  could  not  be 
elevated  or  refined  at  all,  nor  does  it  seem  possible  to 
endow  the  Olympians  with  any  essential  goodness,  or 
dignify  in  any  way  the  endless  and  ever  present  legends 
of  the  concupiscence  of  Zeus.  Allegorical  refinements 
are  not  essayed  by  the  poet  of  Thebes.  The  myths  were 
rooted  in  the  soil  of  the  Greek  world ;  brook,  spring,  rock, 
and  meadow  commemorated  them  from  generation  to  gen- 
eration: they  were  often  inextricably  bound  up  with  the 
anniversaries  and  festal  days  of  the  particular  community. 
One  can  take  them  or  leave  them,  endow  them  with  any 
moral  nobleness  one  could  not.  Still,  it  would  be  unfair 
thus  to  dispose  of  Pindar. 

There  is  a  nobler  striving  in  the  soul  of  Pindar. 

The  fate  of  Tantalos  is  a  warning  that  no  man  can  in 
his  action  escape  the  notice  of  God  (Ol.,  1,  64).  Zeus  is 
invoked  as  Saviour,  "  Zeus  of  the  high  clouds";  but  also  as 
honoring  the  venerable  grotto  in  Crete  (where  he  was  hid- 
den as  an  infant),  Ol.,  5, 15  sqq.  Truth  is  called  daughter 
of  Zeus  (Ol.,  10,  4).  He,  the  poet,  desires  for  himself 
that  (in  his  further  course  of  life)  he  may  not  chance  upon 
changes  instigated  by  the  jealousy  of  the  gods  (Pythian, 


VOICES  FROM  THE  LYRICAL  POETS  113 

10,  20),  holding  therefore  his  prosperity  by  a  precari- 
ous tenure.  Pindar  would  love  fair  things  that  come 
from  God  (Pyth.,  11,  50).  A  notable  passage  is  that  of 
Nemean  Odes,  6,  1 :  "  One  is  the  race  of  men,  one  that 
of  Gods  :  from  one  mother  breathe  we  both  ;  but  an  ut- 
terly separate  force  holds  them  asunder,  so  that  the  one  is 
nothing,  but  their  ever  safe  abode,  the  brazen  firmament, 
abides.  But  in  some  respects  we  resemble  utterly  the  im- 
mortals, either  in  great  mind  or  body,  although  neither 
by  day  or  night  do  we  know  what  fate  has  written  for 
us,  what  goal  we  are  to  run  to." 

Humility  is  the  wiser  course  :  "  Do  not  vainly  try  to 
become  a  Zeus"  (Isthmian,  5,  14).  "Do  not  vainly  strive 
to  become  a  divinity  "  (OL,  5,  24).  The  race  of  men  is  es- 
sentially "  swift-fated"  short-lived  (Ol.,l,66).  Avoid  inso- 
lence and  satiety  (OL,  13, 10).  What  are  the  chief  boons  or 
blessings  ?  "  To  have  a  pleasant  life  is  the  first  of  prizes: 
to  have  a  good  reputation  is  the  second  lot ;  but  the  man 
who  haps  upon  them  both,  and  seizes  them,  has  received  the 
loftiest  wreath  "  (Pyth.  ,1,99).  "  To  be  rich  with  the  asso- 
ciated lot  of  wisdom  is  best  .  .  .  "(Pyth., 2, 56).  "Wealth 
is  widely  valiant,  when  a  mortal  man  has  it  blended  with 
pure  excellence."  "I  love  not  to  hold  great  wealth  con- 
cealed in  my  hall,  but  to  enjoy  what  I  have,  and  to  have 
good  repute  and  satisfy  my  friends  "  (Nemean,  1,  31). 
The  association  of  fair  deeds  with  a  comely  person  is 
highly  extolled  :  a  characteristic  Greek  conceit  (Nem.,  3, 
19),  which  we  met  above  in  the  didactic  verse  of  Theog- 
nis.  "  The  prosperity  planted  with  God  is  more  abiding 
for  men"  (Nem.,  8,  17).  The  sum  of  Greek  felicity  is 
here  brought  together :  "  But  if  one  possessing  wealth  in 
his  personal  comeliness  excels  others,  and  excelling  in  con- 
tests demonstrates  his  strength,  let  him  remember  that  the 
limbs  he  drapes  are  mortal,  and  that  he  will  be  clothed 
with  the  end  of  all,  earth  "  (Nem.,  11,  13). 

He  moralizes  (Fragm.  146)  on  a  feat  of  Hercules,  and 
comes  to  the  gloomy  conclusion  that  the  sovereign  law  is 
at  bottom  nothing  but  the  justification  of  strength  and 
force,  i.e.  Might,  after  all,  makes  Right. 


114  TESTIMOXIUM  ANBLE 

Pindar  was  much  in  Sicily  at  the  rich  and  splendid 
courts  of  Syracuse,  of  Akragas  and  ^Etna.  Perhaps  his 
truth-craving  soul  was  arrested  by  the  graver  precepts  of 
Pythagoras,  whose  disciples  were  ever  fain  to  pursue  a 
cult  of  a  rigid,  if  esoteric,  observance,  a  cult  concerned 
with  the  soul,  its  moral  purity  or  impurity,  its  transcen- 
dental life  from  Eternity  to  Eternity,  and  the  retributive 
justice  of  a  divine  ordination.  It  was  a  philosophy  which 
in  its  very  essence  denied  most  sharply  the  very  fabric  of 
life  and  culture  which  many  now  call  Greekdom  or  Hel- 
lenism, i.e.  the  serene  satisfaction  with  these  earthly 
things  and  their  physical  limitations.  Among  the  most 
eminent  disciples  or  Apostles  of  this  serious  cult  was 
Archytas,  and  Philolaos  of  Tarentum.  Whatever  may 
have  been  the  concern  or  interest  of  the  Theban  poet, 
some  grave  and  curious  lines  of  his  pen  are  preserved 
among  his  verse,  as  in  OL,  2,  66  :  "  He  knows  the  future, 
that  the  souls  of  those  who  died  here,  the  wicked  souls,  at 
once  pay  the  penalty,  and  that  the  shortcomings  com- 
mitted in  this  realm  of  Zeus  some  one  judges  below  the 
earth,  giving  his  verdict  with  bitter  necessity  ;  but  the 
good  possessing  the  sun  with  equal  nights  always  and  equal 
days  receive  a  less  troubled  life,  not  stirring  the  soil  with 
the  strength  of  their  hand  nor  the  water  of  the  deep  on 
account  of  slender  livelihood,  but  in  the  company  of  the 
honored  gods  all  those  who  have  rejoiced  in  keeping  their 
oaths  have  allotted  to  them  a  span  of  Time  that  knows  no 
tears,  but  the  others  endure  trouble  which  eyes  refuse  to 
look  upon.  But  those  who  have  for  three  times  endured 
sojourning  in  both  places  to  keep  their  soul  utterly  from 
unjust  things,  they  accomplish  the  way  to  Zeus  along  the 
tower  of  Kronos,  where  the  Isle  of  the  Blessed  is  fanned 
by  the  breezes  of  Okeanos,  where  golden  blossoms  gleam, 
some  from  the  soil  from  brilliant  trees,  and  water  nurtures 
others,  and  with  garlands  and  wreaths  of  these  they  en- 
fold their  hands  in  the  upright  counsels  of  Rhadaman- 
thys,"  etc. 

Specifically  it  is  the  virtue  of  reverence  for  the  gods  in 
actual  worship  (eiWy&eta)  and  its  counterpart,  unrever- 


115 

ence  or  impiety  which  receive  condign  treatment  or  re- 
ward in  the  world  which  follows  after  death  :  so  Pindar 
wrote  in  his  funeral  verse,  his  Threnoi,  Fragm.  106  sqq.: 
"  For  them  shines  the  power  of  sun  during  our  night,  — 
below,  and  in  meadows  adorned  with  scarlet  roses  is  their 
suburb  ancj  shaded  with  incense-bearing  trees  and  loaded 
with  golden  fruits,  and  some  with  steeds  and  wrestling  feats, 
and  some  with  throw  of  dice,  and  others  with  the  harps 
rejoice  themselves.  ..." 

"  And  all  in  blessed  fate  (receive)  a  consummation  free- 
ing them  from  toil.  The  body  of  all  goes  in  the  wake  of 
powerful  death,  but  a  living  image  of  time  is  still  left ; 
for  that  alone  is  from  the  gods.  And  it  sleeps  while  the 
limbs  are  active,  but  for  those  who  sleep  does  it  show  in 
many  dreams  the  imperceptibly  approaching  judgment  of 
things  delightful  and  of  those  which  are  heavy.  ..." 
Again,  in  Fragm.  110  :  "  And  those  for  whom  Persephone 
will  receive  the  punishment  of  ancient  woe,  in  the  ninth 
year  does  she  give  up  to  the  upper  sun  again  their  souls  ; 
of  these,  splendid  kings  are  born  (grown),  and  men  swift 
in  strength,  and  very  great  in  wisdom.  But  henceforth  by 
men  are  they  called  stainless  heroes"  (i.e.  demigods,  in  the 
peculiar  sense  of  Greek  religious  ideas).  Stainless,  as 
though  it  were  indeed  highest  consummation  of  the  human 
soul  to  free  itself  from  guilt  and  sin.  At  the  same  time, 
guilt  and  sin  are  not  conceived  very  profoundly,  not  even 
by  the  noblest  of  the  Greek  lyrical  poets.  Nowhere  do 
we  observe  that  sharp  antithesis  between  the  moral  law 
and  between  the  law  in  the  members  ;  their  morality 
could  not  very  well  be  higher  than  their  objects  of  wor- 
ship, and  these,  in  all  truth,  were  not  high.  The  reader  of 
Pindar  may  see  for  himself  in  Pyth.,  1,97-98  ;  Nem.,  8, 
2;  Isthm.,2,  3-5;  and  particularly  the  frank  and  un- 
blushing manner  in  which  a  comely  youth  is  praised  :  fr. 
100,  v.  Athenseus,  XIII,  601,  c,  especially  the  third  line. 
Pindar  was  no  prophet  of  righteousness  for  his  nation. 
Was  there  any  figure  at  all  comparable  to  the  prophets 
of  Israel?  No.  The  belief  was  widespread  that  certain 
forms  of  ritual  or  sacrificial  procedure  were  quite  sufficient. 


116  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

Greek  men  craved  no  righteousness  deeper  or  higher  than 
those  of  their  own  gods.  These  indeed  were  figments  of 
physical  personification,  but  in  their  morality  they  were 
indeed  very  real,  for  they  mirrored  the  standards  of  life 
and  conduct  of  that  nationality  that  moulded  these  idola. 
While  very  little  would  be  lost  to  the  essential  strength 
and  truth  of  the  Christian  religion,  if  the  masterworks  of 
Donatello,  Michel  Angelo,  Rafael,  or  da  Vinci  had  never 
been  made,  if  worship  were  carried  on  by  the  waterside, 
or  under  a  tent  rather  than  in  St.  Peter's  or  St.  Paul's,  so, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  low  level  and  the  intrinsic  worth- 
lessness  of  the  Hellenic  religion  gains  nothing  whatever 
through  the  artistic  excellence  of  a  Homer,  a  Phidias,  or  a 
Praxiteles. 


NOTE.  —  Bergk's  "Lyrici,"  is  the  most  important  book  of  reference 
for  Chapter  5.  I  have  used  the  third  edition,  1866.  Gilbert  Murray,  a 
Scottish  Professor  of  Greek  Literature  ("  A  History  of  Ancient  Greek 
Literature,"  Appleton,  1901,  p.  84)  :  "  There  is  some  sentiment  which 
we  cannot  enter  into :  there  were  no  women  in  the  Dorian  camps." 
On  the  Greek  cult  of  masculine  comeliness  v.  Winckelmann  "  Werke" 
Dresden,  Vol.  4,  passim:  The  aesthetic  sense  of  the  Greeks,  as  this 
fifth  chapter  abundantly  suggests,  was  very  far  from  furnishing,  as 
Winckelmann  claims  (t'6.,  p.  19)  for  Greek  Freedom,  the  "  germs  of 
noble  and  elevated  sentiments.  .  .  ." 

The  close  association  between  pulchritude  and  libido  is  abundantly 
emphasized  by  Plutarch  and  Cicero,  the  former  of  whom  (Amatorius) 
makes  the  Greek  gymnasia  directly  responsible  for  the  moral  degra- 
dation of  the  Hellenic  world :  and  even  there  the  mien  of  the  Sage 
of  Chseronea  is  not  even  ruffled.  A  fling  at  women  in  general  seems 
to  have  been  permitted  every  literary  man  almost :  there  is  no  ideal- 
ization of  woman  anywhere,  v.  Stobaeus,  "  Florilegium "  (c.  73),  and 
the  precepts  for  wedded  life  (c.  74)  are  not  much  kindlier.  Even 
Pythagoras  said  of  her  that  woman's  function  was  chiefly  "  to  keep 
the  house  and  remain  within  and  receive  and  wait  upon  her  hus- 
band." I  cannot  see  that  Welcker's  essay  ("  Sappho  von  einem  her- 
schenden  Vorurleil  befreit,"  " Kleine  Schrtften"  II,  80-144)  disposes 
of  the  problem.  Mure  was  justly  astonished  at  the  indulgent  tone 
with  wtich  Welcker  had  spoken  of  the  Hellenic  vice. 

Before  Pindar  died,  most  of  the  great  Sophists  of  Greece  were  born  — 
when  less  and  less  the  minds  of  the  Greek  leaders  remained  content 
with  the  popular  religion.  The  Greek  mythographers  show  that  con- 
cupiscence, often  bestiality,  was  the  main  thing  in  the  "  loves  "  of 
the  Greek  gods,  hence  the  utter  absence  of  romance  in  the  relations 


VOICES  FROM  THE  LYRICAL  POETS  117 

of  the  sexes  is  not  so  marvellous :  e.g.  Hephaistos  enamoured  of 
Athena ;  Poseidon  pursuing  Demeter  in  Arcadia,  Zeus  (whom  Lac- 
tantius  justly  calls  Salacissimus)  smitten  with  Kallisto,  Heracles  and 
Auge,  and  so  on.  Genuine  Neopaganism  cannot  but  degrade  woman, 
and  the  purest  Lyrics  cannot  veiy  well  be  conceived  in  any  social 
order  inferior  to  the  Christian. 

Seneca's  brief  utterance  as  to  the  Greek  lyricists  should  not  be  for- 
gotten :  "  illi  ex  professo  lasciviunt "  (Epist.,  49,  5). 


CHAPTER  VI 

HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP  AMONG  THE   GREEKS 

THE  narrow  limitations  of  physical  force  and  potency 
stained  with  legends  of  concupiscence,  wrath,  revenge, 
jealousy,  and  every  human  weakness,  the  gods  of  Greece; 
all  these  were  a  bar  impassable  for  any  serious  spiritual 
aspiration  in  the  Hellenic  religion,  so-called.  The  worship 
of  men,  or  the  extolling  close  up  to  the  point  where  wor- 
ship begins,  this  the  Greeks  had  practised  from  the  begin- 
ning among  one  another.  They  had  made  gods  very  like 
unto  themselves :  what  need  we  wonder  if  they  made  gods 
of  their  own  kind  ?  Given  the  incredible  narrowness  and 
intensity  with  which  every  polls  or  community  advanced 
its  own  honors,  it  is  easy  to  see  how  honors  should  be 
shown  to  those  of  the  dead  whose  names  and  services  kept 
afresh  that  peculiar  form  of  local  pride  so  characteristic 
of  the  Hellenes,  whose  political  history  is  an  almost  un- 
broken chain  of  deterrent  lessons. 

The  usage  of  creating  and  honoring  in  a  distinctly 
religious  way  the  spirits  of  those  departed  ones  to  whom 
some  particular  eminence  was  gratefully  ascribed,  this 
usage,  I  say,  is  distinctly  younger  than  the  Homeric  Epics. 
In  the  Iliad,  as  I  have  shown  before,  Herakles  had  by  no 
means  as  yet  been  raised  to  the  Olympus. 

I  must  revert  for  a  little  while  again  to  Hesiod  of  Askra. 
His  rude  philosophy  of  History,  the  steady  decline  and 
decay  from  an  almost  paradise-like  status  of  new  and  fresh 
mankind  is  one  of  the  features  of  that  congeries  of  Epical 
verse,  the  "  Works  and  Days."  In  tracing  the  Fourth  Race, 
he  calls  it  (159  sqq.y  the  divine  race  of  hero-men  who 
are  called  demi-gods:  of  these  were  the  Seven  who  went 
against  Thebes,  and  the  valiant  men  of  the  Trojan  war. 

118 


HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP  AMONG  GREEKS     119 

These,  after  death,  passed  on  to  abodes  where  they  know 
no  trouble  or  care,  in  the  Isles  of  the  Blessed,  along 
Okeanos  of  the  deep  current,  where  the  generous  soil 
presents  them  every  year  three  crops. 

These,  like  Achilleus  on  an  island  in  the  Black  Sea,  were 
revered,  while  the  dead  of  the  Golden  Age,  the  First 
Race,  had  a  more  positive  and  practical  relation  to  man- 
kind. 

These,  after  death,  are  still  in  existence,  in  a  spiritual 
fashion,  as  (v.  123)  "guardians  of  mortal  men."  "They 
watch  over  acts  of  justice  and  over  heinous  deeds ;  clothed 
in  mist  they  go  everywhere  to  and  fro  on  the  face  of  the 
Earth,  givers  of  wealth."  .  .  .  Philo,  the  Alexandrine 
Jew,  was  reminded  by  them  of  the  Angels  of  the  Old 
Testament. 

Clearly  these  departed  Spirits  were  not  by  the  Greeks 
conceived  as  removed  to  Olympian  felicity,  unconcerned 
with  the  labors  and  distress  of  their  one-time  state  and 
place,  but  approachable  in  the  very  spot  where  they  were 
buried,  their  tombs,  their  monuments. 

Thus  Pelops  was  conceived  to  be  near  the  Panhellenic 
site  of  Olympia:  of  him  Pindar  says  (OL,  1,  93):  "but 
now  he  is  made  the  participant  of  blood-satisfaction 
splendid,  laid  at  rest  by  the  current  of  Alpheios,  having  a 
tomb  widely  conspicuous,  close  to  an  altar  visited  by  very 
many  strangers.  And  from  afar  off  he  beholds  the  fame 
of  the  Olympian  games.  ..." 

The  scholiasts  say  that  a  black  ram  was  annually  sac- 
rificed to  the  heros  Pelops.  The  ritual  all  pointed,  not 
upward  to  the  gods  of  Light  and  Life,  but  downward  to 
the  abode  of  the  dead:  the  blood  symbolizing  some  tem- 
porary nurture  and  sustenance:  quite  within  the  material 
limitations  and  conditions  of  this  earthly  life,  a  procedure 
not  much  different  from  that  at  the  pit  of  Odysseus  in  the 
Eleventh  Book  of  his  Wanderings.  And  to  this  same 
class  of  beings  intermediate  between  gods  and  men  does 
Pindar  assign  Asklepios  the  physician,  Agamemnon, 
Peleus,  Adrastos,  Aiakos  and  his  progeny,  the  Argonauts : 
the  essential  thing  is  that  the  heros  is  A,aoo-e/3?fc,  "revered 


120  TESTIMONIUM  ANIIVLE 

of  the  people."  No  quasi-theological  belief  is  uttered  of  an 
essential,  specific  immortality  or  translation  to  the  gods : 
it  is  the  voice  of  harmonious  and  unanimous  honor  rising 
either  from  any  given  community  or  from  the  sense  and 
feeling  of  the  entire  Grecian  world.  The  thing  so  very 
hard  for  us  moderns  who  in  the  main  are  reared  in  reli- 
gious and  moral  conceptions  transcending  time  and  space, 
absolute  and  eternal,  —  I  say  for  us  it  is  difficult  to  realize 
the  narrow  limits  within  which  the  typical  Greek  lived 
and  died,  in  which  he  was  content  to  be  honored,  the 
fancies  and  traditions  which  he  absorbed,  as  the  particular 
oak  on  the  particular  hillside  is  nurtured  or  retarded  by 
the  limitations  of  its  specific  soil  and  climate,  air,  light, 
and  sunshine. 

Herodotus  (2,  44)  realizes  that  the  Theban  Herakles  is 
much  younger  than  the  Syrian:  hence,  he  says,  the  Greeks 
acted  wisely  in  establishing  a  twofold  worship  :  viz.,  that 
of  the  Olympian  god  Herakles,  to  whom  they  offer  up 
regular  sacrifice  with  feast  attached  (Ovo-ta),  and  cut  the 
throat  of  victims  for  the  other.  Herodotus  (2,  55)  also 
made  record  of  the  fact  that  the  Egyptians  had  no  cult  of 
such  demi-gods. 

Founders  of  tribes  and  political  forms  were  particularly 
so  honored,  the  consciousness  of  common  descent  being 
the  essential  thing  in  citizenship,  and  there  was  no  ob- 
jection to  artificial  creations,  as  of  the  eponymous  Found- 
ers in  Attika,  under  the  adroit  reforms  of  Kleisthenes  there, 
in  510  B.C.  (including  Ajax,  the  great  name  and  glory 
of  Salamis),  when  the  whole  legendary  history  and  great 
names  of  Attic  past  were  thus  incorporated  in  the  daily 
life  and  nomenclature  of  the  Attic  people. 

Many  of  these  heroes  had  a  sacred  enclosure  (rep^vos) 
and  a  fane  or  sanctuary  (r)pSx>v).  There  was,  also,  a  belief 
in  their  power  to  benefit  and  bless,  or  to  injure  and 
work  harm  ;  so  that  on  the  whole  the  motives  of  fear,  hope, 
and  civil  pride  are  clearly  discernible  in  this  institution. 
The  striking  uniformity  observable  here  was  due,  in  no 
small  measure,  to  the  corporation  of  Delphi,  for  Greek  re- 
ligion was  incessantly  concerned  with  current  events  and 


HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP  AMONG  GREEKS    121 

particularly  with  extraordinary  or  abnormal  happenings, 
when  the  resort  to  the  central  point  of  authority  ever  deep- 
ened the  practical  dependency  of  communities  as  well 
as  individual  persons  on  the  Parnassian  verdict.  The 
Athenians  appointed  a  sacred  enclosure  for  the  JEginetan 
Founder  Aiakos  (Her.,  5,  89)  by  Delphian  direction;  was 
it  to  deprive  their  naval  rival  of  that  blessing  and  power  ? 
And  when  the  assembled  Greeks  at  Salamis  were  prepar- 
ing for  the  great  crisis,  they  despatched  (Her.,  8,  64)  a 
ship  to  bring  Aiakos  to  bless  and  strengthen  them  :  did 
they  transfer  actual  bones  ?  Or  was  a  transfer  effected 
merely  by  some  ritual  act  ? 

The  paternity,  and  thus  the  legitimacy,  of  a  Spartan 
king  was  put  in  jeopardy  by  the  belief  of  the  queen 
mother's  husband  that  the  local  heros  Astrabakos  had 
assumed  his,  the  king's,  form  and  appearance  (Her.,  6, 
69).  After  Salamis  the  Persian  governor  in  the  Cherso- 
nesos  was  nailed  to  a  plank  by  the  enraged  Greeks  because 
he  had  taken  particular  pains  to  defile  the  sanctuary  of 
the  heros  Protesilaos  at  Elaius.  Besides  this  the  Oriental 
had  removed  the  money  and  consecrated  gifts  from  the 
fane  (Her.,  9, 116, 120).  On  the  wall  of  the  Painted  Porch 
at  Athens  there  was  limned  the  "  heros  Marathon  "  as 
helping  to  victory ;  also  there  was  the  founder  Theseus 
actually  rising  from  the  soil  (Paus.,  1,  15,  3) :  and 
even  in  that  late  traveller's  time  (160  A.D.)  "one  may 
hear  at  night  the  neighing  of  the  steeds  and  the  cries  of 
men  giving  battle." 

In  the  year  476  the  Athenians  removed  what  they 
believed  to  be  the  bones  of  their  founder,  Theseus.  An 
eagle,  Plutarch  says  ("  Theseus  "  36),  indicated  the  spot.  A 
tomb  was  found  containing  a  coffin  with  a  giant  skeleton 
and  spear  and  sword  lying  alongside  of  it,  of  the  Bronze 
Age.  The  sanctuary  built  for  this  "Theseus"  by  the 
enthusiastic  Athenians  was  a  legal  asylum  for  slaves  and 
for  those  who  feared  those  who  were  too  powerful  for  them. 
The  greatest  annual  sacrifice  (as  to  a  god)  the  people  made 
to  him  on  the  day  on  which  he  had  once  returned  from 
Crete,  on  the  eighth  day  of  the  month  Pyanepsion.  Am- 


122  TESTIMONIUM 

phiaraos  was  one  of  the  Seven  against  Thebes,  of  a  race  of 
soothsayers.  He  perished  before  Thebes ;  that  is,  Zeus 
split  the  earth  for  him,  and  with  his  chariot  he  disappeared 
in  the  cleft.  The  people  of  Oropos  were  the  first  to  rate 
him  a  god;  later  all  the  Greeks  followed  their  example 
(Paus.,  1,  34,  2). 

But  why  enumerate  more  ?  Every  village  and  valley 
had  a  heros.  Epaminondas  sacrificed  to  Spedasos  and  his 
daughters  before  he  unfolded  his  oblique  order  of  battle 
on  the  fateful  field  of  Leuktra,  371  B.C.  Why  ?  Because 
once  upon  a  time  two  Spartans  had  outraged  these  virgins ; 
but  these,  in  their  shame  and  anguish,  had  slain  themselves 
by  the  noose.  The  power  of  retributive  justice  therefore 
was  here  invoked  by  the  great  Theban  captain. 

And  not  only  with  names  hallowed  by  civic  gratitude 
and  an  unbroken  series  of  anniversary  celebrations  did  the 
Greeks  practise  this  form  of  worship  and  honor,  but  also 
with  figures  which  stand  out  in  the  full  light  of  historical 
noonday.  Thus  the  commonwealth  of  little  stout  Platsea 
undertook  (Plutarch,  "Aristides,"  21)  to  make  a  blood- 
sacrifice  every  year  to  the  Greeks  who  had  perished  there  in 
the  national  battle  (of  479)  "and  lay  there."  There  was  a 
procession  led  by  a  trumpeter  who  blew  the  signal  for  the 
charge,  there  were  also  chariots  full  of  myrtle  and  wreaths. 
The  victim  was  a  black  steer.  There  were  jars  with  liba- 
tions of  wine  and  milk,  nor  were  oil  and  unguents  lacking. 
After  sacrificing  the  steer  so  that  his  blood  was  absorbed 
by  the  pyre,  there  was  a  prayer  to  Zeus  of  the  Earth  and 
Hermes  of  the  Earth  (escort  of  souls),  whereupon  the  chief 
magistrate  of  Platsea  summoned  the  brave  men  who  had 
died  for  Greece,  to  the  feast  and  to  the  blood-satisfaction 
(haima-kuria :  Plutarch  maintains  the  Pindaric  phrase). 
Their  health  also  was  drunk. 

"  I  have  a  bronze  statuette,"  says  a  physician  (in  Lucian, 
" Philopseudes "  21),  "a  cubit  in  size,  which,  whenever 
the  wick  of  the  lamp  is  extinguished,  makes  the  rounds 
of  the  whole  house,  making  a  noise,  and  overturning  the 
phials,  and  pouring  together  the  potions,  and  overturning 
the  door  and  particularly  when  we  postpone  the  sacrifice, 


HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP  AMONG  GREEKS    123 

which  we  bring  to  him  once  each  year."  Aratos  of  Sikyon 
was  the  leading  statesman  of  the  Achasan  League  in  his 
time  (d.  213  B.C.  at  Aigion).  The  Sikyonians  (Plutarch, 
"Aratos,"  53)  conveyed  the  corpse  into  their  town,  the  peo- 
ple being  crowned  with  garlands  and  attired  in  white  rai- 
ment, and  buried  him  in  a  conspicuous  place  there,  and 
sacrificed  to  him  as  to  a  founder  and  saviour,  down  to 
Plutarch's  time,  i.e.  more  than  three  hundred  years,  for 
having  saved  that  commonwealth  from  autocratic  rule. 
There  was  a  particular  priest  of  Aratos  as  there  was  of 
Zeus  the  saviour.  Some  said  Aratos  was  a  son  of  Askle- 
pios  (Paus.,  2,  10,  3). 

In  the  course  of  the  Peloponnesian  war,  Brasidas,  the 
Spartan  general,  died  422  B.C.,  in  defending  Amphipolis 
against  the  Athenians  (Thucydides,  5,  11).  He  received 
a  public  burial :  his  tomb  was  placed  close  by  the  market- 
place and  the  monument  surrounded  with  a  barricading 
enclosure  ;  blood-sacrifices  downward  were  rendered  to 
him  as  to  a  heros,  with  games  and  annual  burnt-offering, 
they  deeming  him  their  saviour. 

The  philosopher  Anaxagoras  was  similarly  honored  in 
Lampsakos  on  the  Hellespont,  where  he  was  buried. 
Theron,  autocrat  of  Akragas  in  Sicily,  was  honored  with 
similar  distinction  after  his  death,  and  when  his  tomb 
was  emptied  by  the  Carthaginians  and  a  plague  fell  upon 
them,  it  was  widely  believed  that  here  was  the  vengeance 
of  the  heros  (Diodorus,  13,  86).  The  laws  of  Lycurgus 
provided  that  the  deceased  kings  of  Sparta  should  be 
honored  "  not  as  human  beings,  but  as  heroes "  (Xeno- 
phon,  "  State  of  Lacedaemonians,"  15,  9). 

Whosoever  has  perused  this  volume  from  the  beginning 
will  not  marvel  that  it  would  have  been  not  a  very  vio- 
lent step  forward  to  assign  divine  honors  to  one  living,  to 
raise  by  one  definite  step  or  grade  him  who  was  to  be 
honored.  The  Stoics,  in  many  ways  the  most  spiritual 
thinkers  of  the  ancient  time,  were  fond  of  saying  that  it 
was  in  the  matter  of  lasting  alone  that  the  Sage  dif- 
fered from  the  gods.  A  curse  always  is  slavery:  given 
the  trend  to  extol  and  deify  force  and  power  (the  pal- 


124  TESTIMONIUM  ANIALE 

pable  ulcer  in  every  neopagan  movement),  what  need 
we  marvel  at  the  last  and  consistent  sequence  drawn  by 
the  pagan  spirit?  The  call  to  be  good  goes  out  to 
all  mankind,  the  privilege  of  being  uncommonly  strong 
seems  an  endowment  of  but  few,  veritably  a  natal  endow- 
ment :  why  so  greatly  extol  a  gift  ?  But  to  return  to 
the  past. 

When  Lysander,  generalissimo  of  Sparta  and  her  allies, 
in  405,  at  Goat's  River  in  the  Hellespont,  had,  with  one 
stroke,  destroyed  the  Athenian  empire,  the  "  freed  "  com- 
monwealths "reared  to  him  altars"  (Plutarch,  "Lysan- 
der," 18),  "  as  to  a  God,  and  sacrificed  offerings,"  hymns  of 
victory  as  to  a  new  Apollo  were  sung,  the  Samians  voted, 
actually  voted,  to  rename  their  Hera-anniversary  and  call 
the  celebration  Lysandria  instead.  Poets  were  eager  to 
attune  their  lyre  to  the  new  god  :  it  was  the  year  in  which 
a  Sophocles  passed  away.  A  little  later  in  Greek  politics 
the  people  of  Thasos  offered  divine  honors  to  Agesilaos  of 
Sparta.  The  hard-headed  and  sober-minded  king  asked 
of  the  delegates  why,  if  the  Thasians  could  translate  mere 
men  to  divinity,  why  they  did  not  so  extol  themselves  ? 
Also  he  refused  the  setting  up  of  his  images  (Plutarch, 
"  Apophthegmata  Laconica"  25  s<?.). 

When  Philip  had  begun  to  set  his  foot  on  the  neck  of 
Greece  after  his  great  victory  of  Chaironeia,  338  B.C.,  he 
built  a  commemorative  fane  at  Olympia,  where  images  of 
members  of  his  dynasty  were  placed  (Paus.,  5,  20,  9-10), 
of  gold  and  ivory,  like  unto  the  Olympian  Zeus  of  Phei- 
dias.  The  catastrophe  of  King  Philip  was  curious.  It 
was  in  the  summer  of  336  B.C.  A  splendid  assembly 
had  gathered  at  Aigai  in  the  north  to  attend  the  nuptials 
of  the  king's  daughter,  Kleopatra.  Feasts  and  contests 
were  the  order  of  the  day.  His  ambition  was  now 
clearly  facing  toward  Persia.  Golden  wreaths  were  ar- 
riving from  many  commonwealths.  In  the  festal  pro- 
cession were  borne  images  of  the  twelve  Olympian  gods, 
and  as  thirteenth  the  splendidly  adorned  statue  of  King 
Philip  himself,  who  thus  appeared  as  assessor  of  the 
Olympians.  When  all  were  seated  in  the  vast  theatre, 


HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP  AMONG  GREEKS     125 

the  royal  host  at  last  appeared,  draped  in  white,  far  re- 
moved from  his  satellites,  enjoying  this  occasion  to  present 
himself  to  the  loyalty  and  good-will  of  the  Hellenic 
world.  But  at  this  moment  one  of  the  king's  own  Gany- 
medes,  a  man  at  arms,  hastened  up  and  pierced  Philip's 
body  with  a  Keltic  sword  (Diodorus,  16,  92-94).  When 
Alexander  came  to  the  Nile  in  carrying  forward  his 
father's  ambition  with  still  greater  genius  and  energy,  he 
posed  as  a  son  of  Zeus  Ammon.  "  He  needed  this  honor," 
says  a  modern  scholar,  "  to  be  rated  by  the  natives  as  a 
genuine  successor  to  the  Pharaohs  of  old.  ..."  The  chief 
hierophant,  in  the  name  of  the  god  of  the  desert,  greeted 
the  western  conqueror  as  "  Son."  The  priests  also  told 
Alexander  that  the  vastness  of  the  young  king's  achieve- 
ments would  (Diodorus,  17,  51)  be  proof  of  the  Macedo- 
nian's divine  descent.  And  this  was  the  soul  that  had  had 
the  instruction  of  the  keenest  and  clearest  mind  of  the 
classic  world,  that  of  Aristotle. 

So  in  this  royal  youth  there  was  a  puzzling  congeries  of 
motives  and  impulses,  deep  policy,  and  irresistible  enthusi- 
asm. 

And  so  at  the  very  end  and  issue  of  Greek  things  have 
we  this  craving,  so  incompatible  with  any  sincere  pretence 
of  humanity,  as  we  have  the  demi-gods  in  the  initial 
myths  and  in  the  nebulous  beginnings  of  Greek  records. 

Pure  humanity  indeed !  Subsequently,  drunk  with 
sweet  fortune,  the  young  king  demanded  prostration  even 
from  his  own  race,  from  the  Macedonians,  while  Greek 
flattery  had  been  engaged  in  undermining  Alexander's 
equipoise  and  self-control,  literary  men  were  these  who 
offered  him  the  incense  of  their  verse,  for  his  eastern  gold. 
They  told  him  (Curtius,  8,  5,  8)  that,  one  day,  in 
Olympus,  Herakles  and  Dionysos,  no  less  than  Pollux  and 
Kastor,  would  yield  to  the  new  divinity.  So  Kallisthenes, 
historian  in  ordinary  to  the  conqueror,  and  nephew  of 
Aristotle,  finally  fell  a  victim,  in  part,  to  his  own  frank 
avowal  of  human  freedom. 

With  the  deeper  and  earnest  Stoics,  Alexander's  fame 
fared  but  ill :  "  Alexander,  who  hurled  his  lance  among 


126  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

his  own  guests,  who  cast  one  friend  before  wild  beasts,  the 
other  before  himself,"  says  Seneca  ("  De  Ira,"  3,  23).  "  For 
what  difference  is  it,  I  pray  thee,  Alexander,  whether  you 
cast  Lysimachus  before  a  lion,  or  himself  mangle  him 
with  your  own  teeth?  Thine  is  the  mouth,  thine  that 
savagery  "  (Seneca,  "  De  dementia,"  1,  25, 1).  The  same 
thinker  says:  "Alexander  of  Macedon,  when  as  victor  of 
the  East  he  was  lifting  his  spirit  above  the  level  of  man, 
the  Corinthians  congratulated  through  envoys  and  pre- 
sented him  with  their  citizenship."  When  Alexander  had 
smiled  at  this  sort  of  attention,  one  of  the  envoys  said : 
"  We  have  never  given  citizenship  to  any  other  but  to  you 
and  to  Hercules.  .  .  .  And  that  person  devoted  to  glory 
of  which  he  knew  neither  the  nature  nor  the  limit,  pur- 
suing the  tracks  of  Hercules  and  of  the  Wine  God,  and 
not  even  halting  there  where  they  had  given  out,  looked 
away  from  the  givers  to  the  partner  of  his  own  honor,  as 
though  he  held  the  realms  of  the  sky  which  he  was  en- 
deavoring to  embrace  with  his  vain  soul,  because  he  was 
put  on  a  level  with  Hercules.  For  what  had  in  common 
that  crazy  youth,  whose  lucky  recklessness  was  rated  as  a 
virtue  ?  " 

Alexander's  successors  in  the  main  organized  their  own 
worship  and  that  of  their  several  dynasties,  with  priests, 
temples,  and  court-poets  —  the  latter  the  true  spirit  of 
later  Hellenism,  very  learned,  very  adroit,  worshipping 
the  hand  that  fed  them,  without  any  civil  or  political 
attachment,  bitterly  jealous  of  one  another  —  but  guar- 
dians of  culture!  The  second  Ptolemy  made  his  sister 
Arsin6e  his  wife  and  queen.  The  locks  of  Berenike, 
spouse  of  the  third  Ptolemy,  were  promptly  assigned  to  a 
constellation  by  the  court-astronomer,  Konon.  Incest 
became  the  system  of  this  deified  dynasty  down  to  Kleo- 
patra,  who  successfully  ensnared  the  great  Csesar  himself. 

The  venerable  commonwealths  of  central  Greece  more 
and  more  became  mere  pawns  in  the  incessant  struggles 
for  power  which  prevailed  among  Alexander's  successors, 
particularly  the  dynasts  of  Syria,  Egypt,  and  Macedon. 
Whatever  pride  the  Athenians  had  in  their  forbears,  they 


HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP  AMONG  GREEKS     127 

had  none  whatever  in  themselves,  and  prostrated  them- 
selves before  that  autocrat  who  happened  to  dominate  on 
soil  or  billow,  with  consummately  abject  felicity.  Thus 
it  was  in  307-306,  when  Demetrios,  the  city-besieger 
(Poliorketes),  wrested  Athens  from  the  grasp  of  Macedon. 
The  commonwealth  of  Aristides  and  Socrates  enrolled  the 
Syrian  king  and  crown  prince  as  "  the  Saviour  Gods  "  and 
appointed  an  annual  priest  for  the  new  deities  (Plutarch, 
"  Demetrios,"  c.  10).  And  this  priest  was  to  give  his  name 
to  the  year,  as  the  first  archon  had  been  wont  to  do.  The 
place,  where  Demetrios  stepped  from  his  chariot,  was  con- 
secrated and  an  altar  erected  on  it.  This  Athens  too,  this 
much  vaunted  Athens,  was  the  place  where  soon  a  new  and 
nobler  school  of  philosophy  was  to  emerge,  the  Stoa,  which 
was  to  glorify  freedom  and  spiritual  autonomy,  the  very 
sovereignty  of  the  soul,  and  a  certain  contemptus  mundi  as 
well;  but  the  nobler  and  noblest  confessors  were  to  be 
found,  much  later,  on  Italian  soil,  among  the  Romans. 
This  post-Alexandrian  generation  too  was  that  of  Euhem- 
eros,  a  Greek  of  Messana.  He  pointed  out  that  the  gods 
of  Greek  tradition  had  indeed  once  upon  a  time  been  in 
existence:  they  had  indeed  been  kings  and  mighty  men 
of  war  of  the  hoary  past :  these,  in  course  of  time,  had 
been  deified  by  admiring  mankind.  Euhemeros  indeed  is 
the  very  complement  of  Greek  myth-making,  and  of  the 
essentially  low  level  of  Greek  popular  religion,  so-called. 
The  scrawl  of  the  mound  builders  and  the  rude  totems 
of  Alaska  may  be  dubbed  "  art"  I  believe:  and  so  of  Greek 
"religion";  but  it's  an  undeserved  honor  in  both  cases: 
while  German  classicists  have  over  and  over  perpetrated 
the  absurdity  of  actually  speaking  of  Greek  "  church  "  and 
"  theology " :  some  of  these  mere  simply  stupid,  others 
more  positively  malignant,  some  half-unconscious  of  the 
deistic  or  pantheistic  drift  which  such  brutalizing  manipu- 
lation of  nobler  terms  involves. 


We  cannot  very  well  conclude   this   chapter  without 
turning  once  again  to  the  "  navel  of  the  world,"  to  Delphi. 


128  TESTTMONIUM  AXL\LE 

That  Walhalla,  Hall  of  Fame,  Westminster  or  St.  Paul  of 
Greek  glory,  revealed  the  peculiar  kind  of  Greek  hero- 
worship  much  more  conspicuously,  palpably,  and  signifi- 
cantly than  any  other  thing  or  any  other  institution 
within  the  entire  periphery  of  the  Hellenic  world.  These 
things  are  set  forth,  as  they  were  arrayed  in  the  great 
Apollo-temple  under  Parnassos,  as  late  as  160  A.D.,  or 
so,  in  the  Tenth  Book  of  Pausanias  the  traveller  and 
antiquarian.  A  curious  revealing  this  of  Greek  glory  and 
hero-worship.  No  clear  line  there  between  myth,  local 
legend,  and  history.  There  was  a  statue  of  Phayllos  of 
Kroton,  athlete  and  later  a  captain  among  the  defenders 
of  national  honor  in  Persian  times  :  of  Arkadian  Tegea, 
Kallisto  (once  ravished  by  Zeus),  and  the  eponyme  heros 
Arkas  and  his  offspring,  and  these  gifts  did  the  stout  little 
commonwealth  send  once  when  they  had  taken  prisoners 
from  their  irksome  neighbors  the  Spartiats. 

The  Spartans  themselves  commemorated  their  great 
naval  victory  over  Athens,  405  ;  there  was  a  Poseidon, 
and  Lysander,  their  admiral,  crowned  by  Poseidon,  and 
some  one  commander  of  each  allied  state  sharing  in  this 
discomfiture  of  Athens.  Athens  chose  Miltiades,  joined 
with  Apollo,  Athena,  and  local  Attic  heroes  —  tithe  really 
of  loot  of  Marathon.  As  a  rule,  some  victory  in  some 
border  feud  or  some  of  the  endless  contentions  concerning 
some  little  bone  or  other.  These  were  the  actual  occa- 
sions for  such  consecrated  gifts.  Greek  vaunting  over 
Greek,  in  fact.  One  could  read  the  history  of  Greece  in 
that  great  gathering  of  Greek  art.  And  it  would  have 
differed  little  from  the  lessons  furnished  by  their  three 
foremost  historians  :  seeking  their  felicity  in  cutting  short 
the  welfare  of  their  fellow-Greeks,  trying  to  impose  their 
will  on  weaker  neighbors,  unwilling  to  devise,  with  fair 
mind,  any  political  equality  among  their  brethren,  pain- 
fully incapable,  as  a  whole,  of  larger  construction  ;  jealous, 
envious,  small. 

And  so  they  revealed  themselves  in  the  great  crisis  of  the 
Persian  invasions,  when  vanity,  feud,  jealousy,  were  quite 
strong  enough  to  inhibit  any  real,  universal,  national  move- 


HEROES  AND  HERO-WORSHIP  AMONG  GREEKS    129 

ment  or  unity,  when  Syracuse  balked,  because  she  claimed 
admiralship,  when  Corcyra  held  back  to  see,  first,  which 
side  would  win.  As  for  Argos,  her  hatred  of  Sparta  was 
far  greater  than  her  concern  for  national  independence  : 
"Thus  the  Argives  say"  (Herod.,  7,  140)  "that  they  did 
not  endure  the  covetousness  of  the  Spartiats,  but  chose 
rather  to  be  ruled  by  the  barbarians,  than  to  yield  in  any- 
thing to  the  Lacedaemonians.  .  .  ."  Nay,  the  "  navel  of  the 
Earth  "  itself  lost  courage  in  480;  the  corporation  directing 
things  at  Delphi  was  utterly  demoralized  by  the  steady 
advance  of  Xerxes.  The  political  history  of  Greece  is  a 
pitiable  record. 

Of  that  Greek  Westminster,  however,  there  remains  one 
curious  item  :  the  famous  courtesan  Phryne  was  repre- 
sented there,  also  ;  to  use  the  simple  words  of  Pausanias, 
10,  15,  1  :  "Of  Phryne  Praxiteles  —  he  too  a  lover  — 
wrought  a  gilded  portrait-statue,  and  the  portrait-statue 
is  an  '  anathema'  (a  consecrated  gift)  by  Phryne  herself." 
At  Thespiai  the  Kyprian  as  well  as  Phryne  herself,  of 
marble,  by  the  same  eminent  sculptor,  could  be  seen,  in 
bold  juxtaposition :  the  model's  pride. 

She  was  a  poor  girl  of  Thespiai,  but  became  enormously 
wealthy  at  Athens  from  the  courtesan's  profession.  Alex- 
ander of  Macedon  had  destroyed  Thebes  in  the  year  335 
B.C.  She  promised  to  rebuild  the  walls,  if  the  Thebans 
would  make  an  inscription  with  these  words :  "  Razed  by 
Alexander,  but  rebuilt  by  Phryne  the  courtesan  "  (Athe- 
nseus,  book  13).  At  Delphi  her  own  statue  stood  between 
that  of  King  Philip  of  Macedon,  and  although  a  philoso- 
pher once  exclaimed  on  seeing  all  this :  "  A  consecrated 
gift  of  the  wantonness  of  the  Greeks!  "  everything  seemed 
to  be  in  harmony. 

But  miserable  remains  the  attitude  of  many  professional 
archaeologists,  who,  with  their  mental  eyes  closed,  and 
their  bristles  up,  stubbornly  interpret  moral  excellencies 
and  all  kinds  of  "  divine  highness  "  (whatever  that  may 
mean)  into  Phryne's  portrait.  "  Enslaved  as  to  his  soul  " 
—  such  a  one  is  Overbeck,  and  all  other  enthusiasts 
who  crave  divinity  without  any  moral  predicates.  That 


130  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

ecstasy  is  denied  us  common  mortals  :  Overbeck  and  the 
members  of  his  cult  of  course  know  best  whence  they  de- 
rive their  notions,  e.g.  "  That  Praxiteles  understood  very 
well,  to  express,  for  a  more  delicate  perception,  the  god- 
dess in  the  woman."  (Overbeck,  "G-eschichte  der  Grrie- 
chischen  Plastik,"  1870,  Vol.  2,  p.  35.) 

O  autonomous  and  absolute  sestheticism,  how  hast  thou 
ever  perverted  and  degraded  her  who  should  remain  sov- 
ereign over  thee,  —  the  human  soul,  whose  destiny  is  ever 
to  pass  beyond  vernal  things  of  pleasing  contours?  Phryne 
at  Delphi ;  but  in  the  Greek  cult  of  naturalness  she  was 
by  no  means  out  of  place  —  Kypris  was  among  the  Olym- 
pians—  why  not  her  eminent  priestess  among  the  foremost 
of  the  Hellenes  ?  But  let  us  pass  on  to  a  nobler  theme. 


NOTE.  —  Those  who  desire  wider  reading  on  this  topic  may  con- 
sult :  Naegelsbach,  "  Nachhomerische  Theologie"  p.  105 ;  Joh.  Jos. 
J.  Dollinger,  "  Heidenthum  und  ludenthum,"  1857,  p.  90;  Stephanus, 
Thesaurus,  s.v.  rjpo><;. 

F.  Deneken,  article  "Heros,"  in  Roscher,  Lexikon;  C.  F.  Hermann, 
Gottesdienstliche  Alterthiimer,"  16;  Killer  von  Gartringen,  article 
"Apotheosis,"  in  Wissowa-Pauly. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE    CRAVING    FOR    IMMORTALITY.     PYTHAGORAS.     THE 
MYSTERIES  OF  ELEUSIS.     GREEK  PIETY 

THE  concern  of  the  varied  forms  of  local  cults  (so 
largely  making  up  the  whole  of  Greek  Religion),  this  con- 
cern was  largely  with  the  immediate  present,  this  world, 
this  life,  some  gain:  the  peeping  through  the  curtain  of 
the  future.  It  is  the  weakest  side  of  the  classicist's 
concern.  Lifelong  devotion  tempted  many  a  classicist  to 
overstatements  like  this  one  by  Welcker  ("  Grriechische 
Grdtterlekre"  III,  227)  :  "  the  peculiar  religious  system  of 
the  Hellenes,  which,  after  it  had  produced  its  greatest 
effects  in  regard  to  Ethics  and  ^Esthetics.  ..."  As 
to  the  latter,  yes ;  as  to  any  theory  of  morals  or  morality 
—  where  ?  when  ?  how  ?  I  have  been  trying  to  find  out 
for  many  years.  Still  the  testimony  of  the  soul  among 
the  Greeks  furnishes  some  data  of  a  vital  concern  for  things 
not  altogether  of  this  earth  of  ours,  and  transcending  this 
narrow  span  of  life. 

Pythagoras  of  Samos  flourished  539-520  B.C.  Our  data 
of  classic  tradition  are  very  unsatisfactory  and  inadequate. 
He  left  the  famous  isle  of  Hera,  Samos,  then  ruled  over 
by  the  autocrat  Polykrates,  and  went  out  into  the  western 
world  of  the  Hellenes,  Greater  Greece,  as  they  called  it 
with  some  pride.  It  was  a  curious  body  of  followers,  a 
remarkable  kind  of  pursuits  which  he  built  up  in  Croton. 
The  charm  of  mathematics — there  is  such  a  thing  for  the 
esoteric  few — this  charm  possessed  his  soul.  The  human 
mind  (when  fresh  and  young  and  unwearied  by  a  large 
mass  of  traditional  and  conventional  academic  things)  is 
constitutionally  inclined  to  give  body  and  substance  to 
its  own  achievements.  In  that  noble  striving  to  compre- 

J31 


132  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

hend  the  Universal  somehow,  or  from  some  point  of  view, 
Pythagoras  builded  a  system  or  a  philosophy  of  mathe- 
matics, that  is  to  say,  he  endowed  mathematical  notions 
with  a  curious  symbolism  and  significance ;  as  though  the 
essence  of  Being  which  indeed  we  grasp  in  numerical  com- 
prehension and  order  were  substantially  so  determined 
and  constructed.  But  these  symbolisms  of  the  Limited 
and  Unlimited,  of  Monad,  Triad,  Tetrad,  must  not  delay 
us  here.  Or  should  we  attempt  now  to  retrace  how  the 
Pythagoreans  endowed  Five  with  the  meaning  of  definite 
qualification,  Six  with  the  symbolism  of  Animation,  Seven 
with  that  of  clearness  or  brightness,  health  and  reason, 
and  so  on  ?  Certainly  not. 

We  turn  to  the  soul.  This  nobler  part  of  our  being  is 
very  different  from  the  body.  The  essential  and  very 
shallow  overestimation  of  all  things  of  matter  and  those 
which  give  joy  to  this  little  life  of  sense  and  seeming,  this 
striving,  I  say,  so  characteristic  of  the  Greeks  at  large,  was 
radically  antagonized  in  the  Pythagorean  system.  The 
body  is  not  all  the  summum  bonum  of  existence,  but  it  is  a 
prison,  it  is  a  tomb  and  sepulchre,  a  penalty  imposed ;  but 
still  the  passing  from  this  life  was  in  no  wise  left  to  the  dis- 
cretion of  man,  but  of  sovereigns :  divine  rulers.  The  soul 
has  a  heavenly,  an  eternal  origin,  and  its  identity  is  not 
destroyed,  its  continuity  not  terminated,  by  its  passing 
into  new  bodies,  by  its  descent  even  into  bodies  of  much 
lower  order.  Pythagoras  himself  said  that  his  first  incar- 
nation was  as  Aithalides,  reputed  a  son  of  Hermes.  His 
second  birth  was  as  Euphorbos,  who  was  slain  by  Mene- 
laos  in  the  Trojan  war :  meanwhile,  however,  he  had  also 
entered  into  divers  plants  and  animals.  The  third  passing 
into  human  flesh  was  as  Hermotimos  :  this  was  followed 
by  a  sojourn  in  the  body  of  a  fisherman  of  Delos,  named 
Pyrrhos  ;  lastly  he  became  Pythagoras.  There  is  much 
in  this  system  that  is  essentially  gloomy:  for  the  Earth, 
they  claimed,  as  a  whole,  was  one  of  those  cosmic  bodies, 
which  refused  to  adjust  themselves  (v.  Schwegler)  to 
form  and  order,  to  be  in  complete  accord  with  the  har- 
mony of  the  Universe  ;  "  and  the  life  on  Earth,  therefore, 


THE  CRAVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY  133 

is  an  imperfect  condition,  into  which  the  soul,  which  in 
itself  is  '  harmony,'  may  have  passed  not  through  nature, 
but  through  its  own  guilt,  and  which,  consequently,  it 
must  remove  from  itself  again,  in  order  to  gain  permission 
to  return  to  those  purer  regions  whence  it  has  its  origin." 
Conduct  of  Life  is  very  much  loftier  a  matter  than 
academic  originality  or  fitness  for  the  consistent  and 
consecutive  paragraphs  of  the  scholar's  tabulation.  The 
great  point  about  that  brotherhood  was  that  it  made 
incisive  postulates  upon  the  lives  and  living  of  the  mem- 
bers. And  while  there  may  be  here  before  us  certain 
elements  of  pantheism  resembling  Buddha-tenets,  still, 
the  soul  of  man  essentially  is  not  free,  not  emancipated, 
but  it  is  subject  to  divine  laws,  loyal  to  tenets  binding 
and  absolute.  "Men  must  not"  (Diog.  Laer.,  VIII,  9) 
"  pray  for  themselves,"  personally  — why  not  ?  "  Because 
they  know  not  what  is  beneficial  or  truly  advantageous 
for  themselves."  A  stray  notice  this  in  a  late  and  some- 
what mechanical  compiler,  but  still  precious.  Worlds 
above  the  current  and  coarsely  material  and  selfish 
notions  of  Greek  prayer  was  this  :  because  in  the  primacy 
of  the  soul  the  ordinary  impulse  and  craving  of  common 
desire  and  pleasurable  convenience  rarely  is  set  upon  that 
which  is  beneficial  to  the  imperishable  and  transcendent 
part  of  ourselves,  our  soul,  our  spiritual  well-being.  No 
one  but  the  young  or  the  spiritually  shallow  will  deny 
this.  Puzzled,  I  say,  I  am  as  to  the  deeper  attitude  of 
that  nobler  cult :  were  they  Pantheists  ?  But  your 
thoroughgoing  Pantheist  will  make  himself  the  sover- 
eign and  manifestation  of  the  Universe  :  where  then  is 
there  any  sovereign  authority  outside  of  the  subject, 
absolute  and  obligatory  for  man  ?  So,  while  on  the  one 
hand  we  seem  to  read  a  belief  of  a  cosmic  soul  of  which 
our  souls  are  but  infinitely  small  particles,  comparable  to 
the  delicate  specks  of  dust  made  manifest  in  a  dark 
chamber  into  which  a  few  rays  of  sunshine  are  admitted, 
—  so,  on  the  other  hand,  we  meet  everywhere  the  urging 
of  the  soul  and  its  needs,  its  future,  its  responsible  gov- 
ernment of  this  physical  life  of  ours.  They  seem  indeed 


134  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

to  have  availed  themselves  of  the  current  nomenclature  of 
traditional  mythical  beings;  thus  Hermes  was  the  steward 
of  the  souls:  he  led  them  and  admitted  them  from  the 
bodies,  from  earth  and  sea  (Diog.  Laer.,  VIII,  31),  and 
that  those  that  were  pure  were  led  to  the  loftiest  habita- 
tion, but  the  non-puritied  could  neither  approach  closely  to 
the  former,  nor  to  one  another,  but  they  were  bound  with 
chains  unbreakable  by  the  Erinyans.  We  regret  that 
we  do  not  find  any  full  and  satisfactory  exposition  as  to 
what  is  understood  by  souls  pure  and  unpurified.  But 
we  are  not  left  indeed  without  some  noble  traces.  Thus 
(32)  "  the  greatest  concern  in  human  society  was  to  per- 
suade the  soul  to  the  good  rather  than  to  the  bad.  And  men 
were  happy  when  a  good  soul  fell  to  their  lot."  There 
seems  to  have  been  a  body  of  precepts,  some  of  them  of 
decidedly  ascetic  character,  some  also  referring  to  food, 
and  the  abstinence  from  many  items  of  diet  involving 
the  destruction  of  organic  life.  Many  rules  were  there 
also  of  personal  purity  and  purification  coupled  with  much 
symbolism.  Everywhere  does  there  seem  to  have  been 
imposed  the  law  of  restraint,  of  moderation,  temperance, 
—  perhaps  we  may  go  so  far  as  to  say — of  spiritual  domi- 
nation. That  these  grave  and  lofty  tenets,  so  alien  to 
the  Hellenic  spirit  (a  spirit  of  consummate  contentment 
with  the  transitory  outwardness  of  being),  proved  fair 
sport  to  the  free  lances  of  Attic  comedy  goes  without 
saying.  That  they  pursued  a  certain  positive  form  of 
righteous  living  and  genuine  piety,  and  not  merely  cer- 
tain forms  of  ritual  and  purification,  may  be  set  down 
quite  positively.  Porphyry,  in  his  life  of  Pythagoras  (a 
very  late  production,  it  is  true,  of  a  period  when  paganism 
grasped  convulsively  after  everything  spiritually  com- 
mendable and  brought  all  ingredients  of  the  past  into 
uncritical  commingling),  Porphyry,  I  say,  claims  that 
Pythagoras  demanded  that  man  should  deeply  review  or 
plan  his  conduct  of  life  in  the  morning  and  evening,  after 
waking  and  before  going  to  sleep.  I  have  already  referred 
to  the  severe  and  sweeping  condemnation  of  Homer  and 
Hesiod  (Diog.  Laer.,  VIII,  21) — poets,  whose  works  had 


THE  CRAVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY  135 

long  been  received  in  the  practice  of  the  Hellenic  world  as 
repositories  and  standards  of  current  religious  ideas.  A 
genuine  respect  for  the  latter  on  the  part  of  the  older 
Pythagoreans  was,  indeed,  impossible.  This  tradition 
placed  those  poets  in  a  veritable  hell  of  torture  and  retri- 
bution. And  here  we  may  well  incorporate  a  passage 
from  Cicero,  "  De  Natura  Deorum,"  1,  42  :  "  for  not  much 
more  absurd  are  those  things,  which,  widely  spread  in 
the  utterances  of  the  poets,  have  done  harm  by  their  very 
charm  of  attractiveness,  who  have  brought  forward  gods 
inflamed  with  anger  and  insane  with  carnal  lust,  and  have 
caused  us  to  see  their  wars,  engagements,  battles,  wounds, 
besides  their  feuds,  their  ruptures,  discords,  births,  deaths, 
complaints,  lamentations,  their  unrestrained  lusts  in  every 
form  of  self-indulgence,  adulteries,  bonds,  co-habiting  with 
human  kind,  and  mortals  begotten  from  immortals." 
These  popular  poets,  however,  Homer  and  Hesiod,  main- 
tained a  measure  of  authority  not  seriously  impaired,  for 
they  were  inculcated  as  the  basis  of  all  liberal  education. 
The  spiritual  call  of  the  Pythagorean  practice  and  cult 
had  warm  and  earnest  disciples,  but  it  never  made  any 
impression  on  the  Hellenic  spirit  at  large,  a  spirit  not  ill 
repristinated  in  Schiller's  "  Gods  of  Greece  " — an  ecstasy  of 
sesthetical  fervor,  oddly  incongruous  as  coming  from  the 
pen  of  a  man  going  forward  to  the  severity  of  Kantian 
categories. 

Much  more  popular  was  a  certain  striving  for  a  con- 
dition after  death  more  favorable  and  fraught  with  more 
promise  than  that  afforded  by  the  coarse  cult  of  tradition 
and  the  figures  in  Homer  and  Hesiod.  I  mean  the  Mys- 
teries in  Greek  Religion .  Of  these,  three  were  particu- 
larly renowned,  viz.,  those  of  the  Kabiri  on  the  island 
of  Samothrace,  the  private  ritual  of  the  Orphic  mysteries 
of  Dionysos,  and,  lastly,  those  of  Eleusis,  in  honor  of 
Demeter  and  her  daughter  Persephone,  whom  the  Greeks 
generally  called  briefly  Kora,  the  maid.  After  the 
microscopic  elucidation  of  the  ancient  tradition  by  the 
Konigsberg  scholar  Lobeck  ("Aglaophamossive  de  Theo- 


136  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

logise  Mystiese  Graecorum  Causis  1829,"  2  vols.),  it  would 
be  presumptuous  for  any  one  to  hope  to  contribute  even 
a  shred  or  tuft  to  this  discussion.  But  these  essays  of 
mine  are  not  at  all  intended  to  be  antiquarian. 

Old  indeed  were  these  rites  of  Eleusis  and  very  dear  to 
Attic  pride.  So  in  the  "  Homeric "  Hymn  to  Demeter, 
274,  the  rites  or  ceremonial  of  the  Eleusinian  anniver- 
sary are  presented  as  Orgia,  taught  and  suggested  by 
Demeter  herself.  "  Orgia "  properly  means  "  things 
wrought,"  i.e.  religious  rites  practically  enacted,  the 
actual  ceremonial  of  a  religious  form  of  service.  And 
we  are  told,  somewhat  farther  on  in  the  same  Hymnus, 
v.  480  :  "  Blessed  is  that  one  of  men  of  this  earth  who  has 
gazed  upon  these  things.  But  he  who  is  not  initiated  in 
the  sacred  rites,  and  he  who  has  a  share  therein,  never 
have  they  a  similar  allotment,  passed  away  though  they 
be,  under  the  dank  and  mouldy  darkness."  No  heaven 
then,  no  consummation  of  the  soul's  intrinsic  being,  but 
in  the  main  a  guarantee  of  a  condition  after  death  much 
more  tolerable  for  the  initiated  than  for  those  who  had 
not  been  initiated.  For  these  the  current  Attic  phrase 
was  "  to  lie  in  the  morass  "  (eV  j3opfidpq>  Keur0ai~) .  All  the 
Mystai  (the  Initiated,  or  admitted  to  share  in  the 
Cult)  purged  themselves  by  ablutions  on  the  seacoast 
and  the  postulates  of  moral  fitness  were  of  a  minimal 
measure  :  their  hands  must  not  be  stained  with  murder. 
It  is  not  accidental  that  we  learn  little  of  the  actual 
phrase  of  the  Initiated  from  Greek  classical  prose  writers, 
-^schylos  was  charged,  it  seems,  with  having  profaned 
the  mysteries,  and  a  versatile  Athenian  of  a  later  genera- 
tion, Alkibiades,  the  exemplar  and  mirror  of  the  incipient 
generation  of  Attic  decadence,  actually  did  profane  them. 
Clement  of  Alexandria  (fl.  200  A.D.)  refers  to  all  these 
things,  naturally,  as  an  Upholder  of  Christian  revelation, 
with  perfect  freedom.  Some  scholars  think  it  probable 
that  he  himself,  before  his  own  conversion,  had  been 
initiated.  But  passing  over  much  of  the  antiquarian 
detail  and  leaving  it  to  its  own  herbaria,  we  ask  very 
sincerely  :  how  did  the  fates  of  Demeter  seeking  her  lost 


THE  CRAVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY  137 

daughter  have  any  bearing  whatever,  even  in  the  elastic 
band  of  tensile  and  ductile  symbolism  which  constitutes 
so  vast  a  portion  of  Greek  and  Roman  religion,  so-called  ? 
The  celebration  was  held  annually  in  Boedromion 
(about  September),  from  the  16th  to  about  the  28th. 
There  was  a  vast  procession  or  pilgrimage  from  the  Pot- 
ters' Suburb  in  North  Athens.  It  is  somewhat  difficult 
not  to  think  of  the  mediseval  pilgrimages  to  particular 
shrines  or  sacred  places.  These  escorted  lacchos-Diony- 
sos,  the  child  of  Kora,  to  Eleusis.  The  tone  of  it  all,  par- 
ticularly during  the  pilgrimage  of  the  distance  (some 
eleven  to  twelve  miles),  was  not  over  solemn,  but  hilari- 
ous, and  when  they  crossed  the  bridge  over  the  Kephissos, 
the  jests  and  jokes  (due  largely,  we  may  believe,  to  the 
incidental  jostling  and  crowding)  do  not  seem  to  have 
been  of  a  more  saintly  character  than  those  of  a  Roman 
or  Venetian  Carnival.  But  the  further  symbolism  was 
more  gloomy.  As  Demeter  in  deepest  sorrow  roamed 
over  the  face  of  the  earth,  with  burning  torches,  without 
eating  or  drinking  :  she,  the  deeply  distressed  mother, 
seeking  in  vain  her  beloved  fair  daughter,  so  the  pilgrims 
did  with  much  imitative  representation  and  pantomime  ; 
while  lacchos  really  represents  humanity.  Torn  in  pieces 
by  the  Titans,  his  heart  only  preserved  in  Zeus,  —  for 
Zeus  really  is  the  father  who  has  co-habited  in  serpent's 
form  with  Kora  even  before  she  has  been  ravished  by 
Pluton.  But  lacchos  is  specially  favored  to  live  anew  : 
in  his  person  and  in  his  legend  there  is  bound  up  the 
human  hope  and  the  human  idea  of  a  palingenesis,  of  new 
birth,  new  life,  of  a  triumph  over  death  and  decay.  The 
Greeks  at  large  did  not  trouble  themselves  much  to  dis- 
tinguish him  from  Semele's  son,  the  vintage-god  of  Thebes. 
So  he  comes  to  be  called  the  "  fair  god,"  the  god  ever 
fresh  and  vernal,  new  life,  new  hope.  And  as  Demeter 
(Earth)  and  Kora  (the  ever  new  life  on  the  Earth)  shelter 
and  love  lacchos  (our  human  kind),  so,  it  seems,  the  Initi- 
ated Greeks,  the  Mystai,  hoped  to  be  sheltered  in  the 
period  after  death,  to  be  sheltered  and  loved  by  the  great 
mother  and  daughter. 


138  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

Before  the  pilgrims  left  Athens,  the  Hierophant  made 
a  solemn  proclamation.  He,  the  "  demonstrator  of  sacred 
things,"  warned  all  who  were  not  Greeks  against  min- 
gling in  the  sacred  procession.  For  this  was  a  cantonal, 
and  by  extension  a  national  feeling,  a  Panhellenic  rite  and 
service.  And  this  limitation  and  national  conceit  was  the 
rule  in  the  ancient  world.  Their  religion  was  a  deliber- 
ate act  or  institution  like  any  other:  myths  involving 
epiphany  of  some  kind,  and  a  revelation  of  some  sort, 
abounded,  and  still  there  was  lacking  any  belief  in  a  re- 
ligious truth  of  world-wide  importance  and  obligation. 
Where,  too,  do  we  find  any  spirit  of  proselytizing  or 
propaganda?  The  great  structure  or  sacred  edifice, 
called  also  Telesterion  or  Anaktoreion  (i.e.  Abode  of  Initia- 
tions, Abode  of  the  Sovereigns),  was  very  large.  It  had 
to  hold  the  vast  congregation  of  the  Mystai.  According 
to  Strabo  (time  of  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era)  ft 
was  able  to  hold  such  a  multitude  as  an  open-air  theatre 
(amphitheatre)  could  accommodate  :  hence,  by  a  fair  com- 
putation, not  less  than  twenty  thousand  people. 

The  celebrations  were  at  night.  There  must  have  been 
a  stage :  for  a  full  view  of  "  what  was  said  and  done  " 
was  a  very  essential  part  of  the  experience  so  highly 
prized  by  those  admitted  to  be  spectators,  Eptiptai.  I 
now  cite  from  one  of  the  best-read  of  scholars,  Preller 
(Pauly,  s.v.  Eleusinia,  p.  107)  :  "Then,  before  the  initia- 
tory rite  itself  all  horrors,  shuddering  and  trembling,  per- 
spiration and  shrinking  astonishment.  From  this  point 
there  bursts  forth  a  wonderful  light :  pleasant  regions 
and  meadows  receive  us,  in  which  voices  and  dances  and 
the  splendors  of  sacred  chants  and  apparitions  make 
themselves  manifest"  (Plutarch).  Similarly  in  another 
passage  where  the  same  author  says  of  the  disciples  of 
philosophy  ("-DeProfectibm  in  Vtrtute")  that  at  first  they 
disport  themselves  in  a  disorderly  and  noisy  fashion,  "  but 
when  they  have  entered  in  and  seen  a  great  light  as 
though  at  the  opening  of  a  temple  of  consecration,  they 
assume  a  different  kind  of  demeanor,  become  still  and  mar- 
vel. ,  .  ,"  Finally  Themistios  ("  Oration,"  20,  p.  235,  f), 


THE  CRAVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY  139 

who  likewise  compares  the  complete  opening  of  philoso- 
phy with  the  moment  "when  the  prophet  widely  opens 
the  foregate  of  the  temple  and  draws  the  curtain  from 
the  temple  and  presents  it  radiant  and  illumined  with 
divine  brilliancy  to  him  who  has  been  admitted  to 
initiation.  .  .  ."  "It  seems  that  the  Ep6ptai  (i.e. 
those  admitted  to  the  degree  of  spectators)  at  Eleusis 
were  led  in  a  symbolical  fashion  through  the  Tartaros  into 
Elysion.  ..."  Connected  with  this  seems  to  have 
been  a  so-called  presentation  of  the  mysteries,  i.e.  of  certain 
sacred  objects,  which  partly  were  symbols  of  the  blessings 
and  secrets  of  the  Eleusinian  divinities,  partly  a  kind  of 
religious  relics.  These  were  shown  to  the  Initiated  in  the 
act  of  consecration,  were  touched  and  kissed  by  them. 

"...  At  first  the  conception  of  the  divinities  of  the 
lower  earth  was  on  the  whole  one  of  awe  :  particularly 
the  specific  forces  of  death,  Aidoneus  (the  Lord  of  the 
Abode  where  you  cannot  see,  the  Prince  of  Darkness)  and 
Persephone  (the  Slayer-goddess)  appearing  as  absolutely 
terrible,  defying  reconciliation,  the  entire  realm  of  death 
is  opposed  to  the  luminous  upper  world  as  fearful  horror 
without  consolation  and  hope.  But  gradually  their  image 
acquires  milder  colors  :  they  do  not  terrify,  but  they  bless 
also,  conceal  the  dead  in  their  lap  as  a  grain  of  seed, 
afford  a  hope  full  of  propitious  significance  to  the  crop  of 
the  departed  intrusted  to  them,  when  they  send  up  the 
grain  of  seed  to  the  light  in  the  freshly  vivified  stalk  of 
grain."  (An  ear  of  grain  figures  conspicuously  in  the 
ritual  of  the  Eleusinian  mysteries.)  These  statements 
then  are  Preller's.  We  will  now  go  on  to  append  a  number 
of  utterances  on  the  bliss  and  consolation  of  these  rites, 
drawn  from  ancient  literature  at  large.  Pindar  we  have 
already  cited  in  Chapter  5.  Sophocles,  in  a  fragment  pre- 
served by  Plutarch  ("De  Audiendis  Poetis"  Chap.  4)  : 
"  Thrice  blessed  are  those  mortals  who  having  gazed  upon 
these  mystic  rites  go  to  the  lower  world :  for  they  alone 
are  there  allowed  to  have  life,  the  others  have  nothing  but 
evil  there."  Plutarch,  by  the  by,  utterly  rejects  the 
doctrine  implied,  for  it  seems  no  demand  was  made  upon 


140  TESTIMONIUM  ANEVLE 

the  spiritual  side  of  man,  the  mere  act  of  sharing  in  the 
ritual  being  deemed  quite  sufficient  and  adequate.  Har- 
lots and  thieves  could  come  in  and  go  on  being  harlots 
and  thieves  and  still  console  themselves  with  the  blessed 
assurance  of  a  lot  infinitely  transcending  that  of  the  non- 
initiated.  The  hard-headed  cynic  Diogenes  (fl.  336  B.C.) 
expressed  a  similar  rating :  "  What  is  that  you  say  ?  " 
said  he.  "  Is  the  lot  which  Pataikion  the  thief  will 
have  after  death  better,  because  he  has  been  initiated, 
than  that  of  Epaminondas  ? "  (Plutarch,  16.).  Epami- 
nondas,  one  of  the  few  truly  great  men  of  Greece, 
was  also  a  devotee  of  Pythagorean  doctrines,  one  of  the 
small  number  of  public  men  of  Greece  who  actually  rose 
high  above  the  temptations  of  ambition  and  of  personal 
aggrandizement,  and  who  neither  feared  nor  flattered  that, 
which  to  most  Hellenic  statesmen  was  in  the  place  of  gods 
and  of  their  very  conscience,  his  own  fellow-citizens  of 
Thebes.  Plato  ("  Republic,"  2,  363)  speaks  with  unmiti- 
gated censure  of  the  kindred  promises  of  orphic  mysteries : 
eternal  banquets  for  the  pious  (o<rtot),  i.e.  for  those  ad- 
mitted —  a  coarse  eternity  of  carousing  for  those  who  had 
satisfied  mere  externalities  of  formulary  and  purification. 
This  at  least  seems  to  have  been  the  actual  current  view 
of  these  things  in  Plato's  time.  Aristophanes,  in  his 
comedy  of  Euripides  and  JEschylus  tried  as  poets  in  the 
lower  world,  when  looking  around  for  suitable  equipment 
of  scenery  and  plot,  introduced  a  chorus  of  Mystai  (405 
B.C.).  See  especially  "Frogs,"  v.  324,  340  sqq.,  382,  397, 
440,  686.  See  particularly  454:  "for  to  us  alone  Sun  and 
Light  are  cheerful,  to  all  of  us  who  have  been  initiated 
and  have  lived  in  pious  wise.  ..."  From  the  dis- 
tinctive or  specific  Attic  point  of  view  these  mysteries 
and  all  the  blessing  of  agricultural  civilization  were  among 
the  chief  assets  of  cantonal  pride  :  let  us  hear  Isocrates  in 
the  "  Panegyricus"  28  :  "  For  when  Demeter  had  come  into 
our  country,  when  she  roamed  after  Kora  who  had  been 
carried  away  by  force,  and  when  she  had  become  kindly 
disposed  to  our  own  sires  on  account  of  the  benefactions 
received  by  her,  the  which  none  other  but  the  Initiated 


THE  CRAVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY  141 

may  hear,  and  when  she  had  given  gifts  which  actually 
are  the  greatest,  viz.,  the  produce  of  the  soil  which  have 
been  the  cause  of  our  not  living  like  the  beasts,  and  the 
Initiation,  the  sharers  in  which  cherish  more  pleasing  hopes 
both  as  to  the  end  of  life  and  all  eternity.  ..."  Similar 
is  the  presentation  of  the  matter  in  Cicero,  who  was  an 
earnest  classicist  in  his  day  and  for  his  day :  "  Athens 
seems  to  have  begotten  many  exceptional  and  more 
than  human  things  and  to  have  brought  them  into  human 
life,  and  particularly  nothing  better  than  those  mysteries, 
by  which  we  have  been  trained  to  civilization  and  rendered 
refined  from  rude  and  uncouth  living:  and  as  they  are 
called  Initiations,  so  have  we  in  all  truth  realized  that 
they  are  the  initial  bases  of  life:  and  not  only  have  we 
a  theory  of  living  with  joyfulness,  but  even  of  dying 
with  a  better  hope  "  ("  De  Legilus"  2,  36). 


On  the  whole  there  was,  as  Plutarch  and  Plato  suggest, 
very  little  indeed  of  genuine  spirituality,  nor  of  a  deeper 
reaction  upon  the  soul,  in  these  secret  and  far-famed  rites. 
The  circle  of  life  there  was ;  the  symbolism  of  the  endless 
succession  of  seed  and  fruit,  of  germ  and  growth,  there 
was  some  taking  hold  of  and  appropriating  of  all  this  ;  but 
as  the  fundamental  weakness  of  Greek  Religion,  so-called, 
remained  unchanged  here,  I  cannot  see  that  there  was  any 
very  material  elevation  above,  nor  any  radical  emancipa- 
tion from,  Nature-cult  to  be  observed  here.  And  just  as 
we,  we  of  the  human  kind,  cannot  dispense  with  reason 
and  spirit,  with  cause  and  effect,  with  time  and  space  — 
so  our  soul  cannot  seriously  turn  with  deeper  satisfaction 
to  forces  and  recurrent  phenomena  in  this  world  of  sense 
and  seeming,  which  mean,  nay,  which  are — merely  the 
coming  and  going  of  matter  in  organic  forms,  nor  can  the 
soul  be  content  in  subordinating  itself  to  showers  and  sun- 
shine, in  turning  to  clouds  and  winds,  in  recognizing  the 
cycle  of  life  and  decay:  it  is  among  these,  but  it  is  not  of 
these.  After  all  they  worshipped  the  continuation  of 
material  and  organic  life,  but  they  craved  not  a  state  im- 


142  TESTIMONIUM  ANIIVLE 

material  or  spiritual ;  they  frankly  sought  consolation  in 
the  very  symbolism  or  symbol  of  physiological  propaga- 
tion in  which  man  differs  not  from  the  lower  beasts. 
Diodorus,  4,  6,  says  :  "  but  some  say  that  the  generative 
members  being  the  cause  of  production  of  human  kind 
and  of  their  enduring  for  all  time,  obtained  immortal 
honor.  .  .  .  And  in  the  mysteries,  not  only  of  Diony- 
sos,  but  pretty  nearly  in  them  all,  this  god  obtains  a  cer- 
tain honor,  being  introduced  with  laughter  and  sport  in 
the  sacrifices." 

It  is  not  essentially  different  from  '•'•das  Ewig  Weib- 
liche "  of  Goethe's  Pantheistical  dithyramb.  Whether 
the  individual  soul  derives  much  or  any  consolation  from 
the  prospect  of  the  continuation  of  frames  like  unto  its 
own,  I  know  not;  I  fear  indeed  that  the  soul  does  not. 
Here  let  us  think  of  the  last  couch,  often  so  wearisome 
and  so  woful,  and  the  last  hours.  The  precocious  lines 
indeed  of  young  Bryant  are  supremely  futile  ;  Hamlet's 
soliloquy  intones  more  truthfully  the  psalm  of  death  as 
rising  from  our  human  kind  at  large.  It  is  this  one  soul, 
my  soul,  which  concerns  me,  and  Hadrian's  last  verses 
truly  are  wrung  from  the  dying  agony  of  man  at  large. 
What  consolation  was  to  him,  then,  the  continuity  of  his 
kind  ?  A  conceit  of  supreme  indifference  and  insignifi- 
cance indeed. 

All  this  may  well  lead  us  to  make  some  inquiry  into 
Greek  Piety,  into  that  virtue  which  in  their  categories 
and  nomenclature  figured  as  Eusebeia,  literally,  "  well 
reverencing"  :  that  is,  not  merely  fidelity  in  acts  of 
prayer  and  worship,  but  a  reverent  soul  as  well,  the  atti- 
tude of  such  devotion  and  respect. 

To  pray,  to  sacrifice  in  the  proper  manner,  to  the  proper 
gods  :  what,  then,  was  the  right  manner  ?  What  were 
the  proper  gods  ?  After  all  these  are  questions  answered 
mainly  by  practical  conformity  to  the  particular  common- 
wealth, often  a  very  little  one,  where,  however,  the  observ- 
ances of  the  past  were  held  with  no  less  tenacity  than  in 
one  of  the  greater  states  such  as  Athens,  Sparta,  Thebes, 


THE  CRAVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY  143 

Argos,  or  Corinth.  With  all  these  traditions  and  usages, 
the  corporation  of  Delphi  remained  the  court  of  last  appeal 
and  was  held  an  ultimate  resort  in  every  question  of  pro- 
cedure, and  in  every  problem  of  piety.  "  Do  not,"  says 
Socrates  in  Xenophon  ("  Memorabilia  "  3,  3,  16),  "  do  not 
be  distressed  about  this  :  for  you  see  that  the  god  in 
Delphi,  whenever  any  one  asks  him  how  he  could  gratify 
the  gods,  answers  :  '  by  the  Usage  of  the  Commonwealth.' " 
Even  the  particular  citizenship  (Naegelsbach,  "  N.  H. 
Theol."  p.  217,  a  book  to  which  I  owe  much)  rested  largely 
on  having  a  share  in  the  sacred  rites  and  ancestral  tombs. 
And  so,  at  Athens,  at  the  opening  of  every  session  of  the 
general  assembly  (Ekklesicf)  of  the  citizens,  curses  were 
uttered  against  the  wicked,  and  ancestral  prayers  were 
uttered  by  the  herald.  Religious  acts  were  bound  up 
with  war,  with  domestic  and  family  life,  from  birth  to 
burial,  and  the  calendar  of  the  commonwealth  identified 
as  it  was  with  the  ever  recurring  ring  of  Nature  and  the 
Seasons,  constituted  a  veritable  garland,  the  flowers  of 
which  were  ever  renewed. 

Agreeably  to  the  character  of  this  book,  I  shall  conclude 
this  chapter  with  a  number  of  significant  and  character- 
istic utterances,  presented  to  my  readers  with  particular 
care,  both  as  to  choice  and  also  as  to  reproduction.  Plato 
in  his  old  age  wrote  as  follows  ("  Laws,"  4,  717,  a)  :  "  First 
then,  we  say,  bestowing  honors  (after  those  due  to  the 
Olympians  and  due  to  the  divinities  possessing  the  com- 
monwealth), bestowing,  we  say,  upon  the  divinities  under- 
ground adequate  and  secondary  and  subsidiary  honors  — 
he  who  does  this  would  most  correctly  hit  the  mark  of 
piety  .  .  .  and  after  these  gods  to  the  daimones  also 
would  the  sensible  person  offer  up  the  particular  ceremo- 
nial of  rites,  and  to  the  heros  after  these.  ..."  And  from 
these  observances  the  old  philosopher  goes  on  to  enumer- 
ate the  honors  shown  to  the  paternal  gods,  and,  finally,  to 
the  parents  themselves,  a  scale  of  duty  and  obligation  in 
which  there  was  indeed  no  link  which  could  be  displaced 
or  broken  by  the  citizen  or  householder.  And  this  iden- 
tity of  obligation  to  gods  and  parents  is  met  with  also  in 


144  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

a  passage  in  Xenophon,  praising  JEneas  of  Troy  ("  Essay 
on  Hunting,"  1,  15)  ;  "  And  .2Eneas  having  saved  his 
paternal  and  maternal  gods"  (think  of  Rachel  fleeing  from 
her  father  Laban),  "having  saved  also  his  father  in  person, 
carried  off  the  reputation  of  piety,  so  that  also  the  foes 
granted  to  him  alone,  when  they  mastered  Troy,  that  he 
should  not  suffer  pillage." 

The  same  writer,  Xenophon,  himself  an  exemplar  of 
close  observance  of  ritual  tradition,  presents  Socrates  in 
the  latter's  own  catechetic  fashion  drawing  out  the  con- 
ception or  current  notion  of  jfc««6eta  ("  Mem.,"  4,  6,  2)  : 
"  Tell  me,  Euthydemos,  what  kind  of  a  thing  do  you  deem 
Eusebeia  to  be  ?  "  And  he  said,  "  A  very  fine  thing,  by 
Zeus."  "  Are  you  able  to  say  then,  what  kind  of  a  person 
the  Eu*eb§s  is  ?  "  "  It  seems  to  me  it  is  he  who  honors 
the  gods."  "May  one  honor  the  gods  in  any  fashion  one 
wishes  to  ?  "  "  No,  but  there  are  laws  in  accordance  with 
which  one  must  do  this."  "He  therefore  who  knows 
these  usages  (laws)  would  know  in  what  fashion  one 
must  honor  the  gods ?"  "I  think  so."  "Really  then  he 
who  knows  how  to  honor  the  gods  does  not  think  he 
ought  to  do  it  otherwise  than  in  the  manner  he  knows  ?  " 
"  Why  no,"  said  he.  "  Does  any  one  honor  the  gods  in  a 
way  different  from  that  in  which  he  thinks  he  must  honor 
them?"  "I  think  not,"  said  he.  "He  then  who  honors 
them  conformably  to  established  usage,  honors  them  as 
he  ought  to  ?  "  "  By  all  means,"  said  he.  "  He  therefore 
who  knows  the  established  usages  concerning  the  gods 
would  correctly  meet  our  definition  of  what  the  pious  man 
is."  In  the  brief  enumeration,  in  that  little  paper  among 
Aristotle's  writings  (on  "  Virtues  and  Vices,"  p.  1258,  c), 
Eunebeia  is  defined  as  an  element  of,  or  a  consequence  of 
righteousness,  at  bottom  consistency  with  civic  virtue,  so 
that  the  good  citizens  will  reverence  his  particular  gods 
no  less  than  the  next  class  in  the  hierarchy  of  being,  viz., 
the  daimones,  after  which  come  one's  native  community, 
one's  parents,  and  finally  the  departed.  For  the  gods 
are  topical,  i.e.  local,  says  Servius  (in  the  dusk  of  things 
pagan  and  things  classical),  the  gods  are  local,  and  do  not 


THE  CRAVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY  145 


pass  over  to  other  countries  (Servius,  "^En.,"  7,  47).  "  Gods 
not  inferior,"  says  the  suppliant  lolaos  (in  Euripides, 
"  Heraclidse,"  347),  "  have  we  for  allies  than  have  the  men 
of  Argos  ;  over  them  is  Hera,  spouse  of  Zeus  :  Athena  over 
w«."  Or  "did  the  gods,"  says  Kreon  in  anger  of  the 
brother-slain  Theban  prince  Eteokles,  "  did  the  gods"  (i.e. 
of  Thebes)  "  exceedingly  honoring  him  as  a  benefactor  con- 
ceal him  (i.e.  kept  his  corpse  covered  with  dust)  who 
came  to  set  on  fire  their  temples'  peristyle,  who  came  to 
scatter  to  the  winds  their  sacred  gifts,  their  lands,  their 
laws?"  A  politico-topographical  limitation  of  piety  we 
see.  And  here  I  may  save  from  obscurity  and  oblivion 
a  curious  fragment  of  the  Attic  antiquarian  Philochoros 
(fl.  270  A.D.),  a  curious  bit  of  Attic  religious  usage 
preserved  for  us  in  a  scholion  on  Sophocles,  "  (Edipus 
Coloneus,"  v.  1047,  i.e.  "when  a  sacred  delegation  goes  to 
Delphi,  then  the  soothsayer  sacrifices  at  Oinoe  (near  the 
frontier  nearest  to  the  Parnassos-country)  daily,  in  the 
Pythian  sanctuary,  but  whenever  the  holy  mission  is  de- 
spatched to  Delos,  then  the  soothsayer  makes  oblation  in 
the  Delian  sanctuary  at  Marathon  :  and  there  is  observa- 
tion of  entrails  (hieroskopia)  on  the  part  of  the  sacred 
delegation  destined  for  Delphi  at  Oinoe,  and  on  the  part 
of  that  for  Delos  in  the  Delian  shrine  at  Marathon." 
What  does  all  this  mean  ?  I  think  the  following  is  signi- 
fied :  the  sacrificial  act,  coupled  with  entrail  inspection,  is 
done  and  performed  as  near  to  the  deity  to  be  consulted 
as  possible,  without,  however,  leaving  the  territory  of  the 
particular  commonwealth  interested  in  that  ascertainment. 
After  all  there  is  a  curioup  circumscription  both  of  reli- 
gious trust  as  well  as  of  the  potency  and  power  of  the 
same  god,  in  his  two  habitations.  One  point  :  the  sacred 
delegates  sacrifice,  through  their  mantic  expert,  until  the 
entrails  say:  go  to  Delphi:  or:  go  to  Delos.  Is  it  not 
quite  fair  to  think  of  the  Ephesian  Artemis  here  ?  "  All 
with  one  voice,"  St.  Luke  tells  us  (Acts  19,  34  «<?.),  "All 
with  one  voice  about  the  space  of  two  hours  cried  out, 
'  Great  is  Diana  of  the  Ephesians.'  '  And  when  the  town 
clerk  had  appeared  to  the  people,  he  said  :  "  Ye  men  of 


146  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

Ephesus,  what  man  is  there  that  knoweth  not  how  that 
the  city  of  the  Ephesians  is  a  worshipper  of  the  great  god- 
dess Diana,  and  of  the  image,  which  fell  down  from  Jupi- 
ter ?  "  The  question  remains  whether  the  vast  majority 
of  the  Greek  people  did  not  after  all  attach  their  piety 
to  these  idols  or  simulacra,  without  any  elevation  of  soul 
towards  a  more  spiritual  or  adequate  object  of  worship. 
For  the  oldest  idola  were  white  stones,  and  all  the  art  of 
Pheidias  and  Praxiteles  did  not  really  divest  these  primi- 
tive objects  of  piety  of  their  importance  with  the  people 
at  large.  With  such  data  Pausanias  abounds  :  see,  for 
instance,  book  7,  22,  4  (at  Pharai,  in  Achaia) :  "  And  there 
are  standing  very  close  to  the  statue  of  the  god  four-cor- 
nered stones,  about  thirty  in  number  ;  these  the  Pharians 
worship,  dubbing  each  stone  with  the  name  of  some  god. 
And  still  farther  back  in  time  white  stones  in  the  estima- 
tion of  all  the  Greeks  had  the  honors  of  gods  instead  of 
statues"  (agalmata).  But  in  a  later  essay  I  shall  hope 
to  deal  with  the  actual  religion  and  religiosity  of  Greek 
communities.  Let  us  moderns  not  be  carried  away  by 
archaeological  exaltation  in  dealing  with  this  grave  matter. 


NOTE.  —  The  great  work  of  Zeller  is  the  best  for  those  who  desire 
deeper  knowledge  of  Greek  Philosophy,  and  so  of  Pythagoras  as  well. 
This  is  so  because  Zeller  has  quoted  and  sifted  the  entire  extent  of 
the  ancient  tradition  with  exhaustive  fidelity ;  the  most  precious  part 
of  his  volumes  is  in  the  footnotes.  For  his  own  person,  Zeller  was 
trained  in  the  pantheism  and  in  the  so-called  Philosophy  of  History 
of  the  Wiirtemberg  metaphysician ;  and  the  fiction  of  the  cast-iron 
dialectic  progression  of  human  history  and  human  culture  maintained 
by  the  Hegelians  vitiates  every  utterance  with  which  Hegel  or,  for 
that  matter,  Zeller,  turn  to,  or  pretend  to  dispose  of,  the  historical 
beginnings  of  Christianity.  Martyrdom  and  absolute  self-denial  of 
the  contemporary  disciples  of  the  Founder  of  Christianity  are  impos- 
sible on  the  conception  of  a  mythical  and  mystical  self-deception  of 
these  witnesses.  St.  Peter  turns,  and  turns  with  absolute  correctness, 
to  face  the  essence  of  the  Greek  religion  :  "  For  we  have  not  followed 
cunningly  devised  fables,  when  we  made  known  unto  you  the  power 
and  coming  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  but  were  eye-witnesses  of  his 
majesty." 

On  Eleusinian  matters  see  Aristides  Rhetor,  p.  415  (the  great 
building  having  been  destroyed  in  182  A.D.).  It  seems  that  moulded 


THE  CRAVING  FOR  IMMORTALITY  147 

figures  and  paintings  figured  there,  i.e.  in  the  structure.  Even  this 
late  witness  of  declining  paganism  asserts  the  exclusive  bliss  of  the 
initiated :  that  they  will  fare  better,  that  they  will  not  die  in  darkness 
and  morass  like  the  non-initiated.  See  also  Schoemann,  Vol.  2,  pp.  380 
sqq. ;  Dollinger,  "  ludentum  u.  Heidenthum,"  pp.  156  sqq. 

The  work  of  Lobeck,  "  Aglaophamos"  Vol.  I,  pp.  1-228,  deals  ex- 
haustively with  every  item  of  the  tradition.  At  the  same  time 
Lobeck's  slurs  against  Creuzer  are  now  indifferent  to  us.  We  note, 
however,  that  Lobeck  treats  with  scorn  the  (deistic)  notion  that  here 
something  profound  or  the  essentially  precious  substance  of  Natural 
Religion  was  delivered  to  mankind.  Lobeck  also  shows  that  there  was 
no  esoteric  and  exoteric  doctrine.  Add  C.  Fr.  Hermann,  "  Gottes- 
dienstliche  Alterthumer,"  §  55;  Naegelsbach,  "Nachhomerische  Theo- 
logie"  p.  396,  article  "  Eleusis,"  by  Kern,  in  Pauly-Wissowa's  "Classical 
Cyclopedia."  On  Greek  Piety  see  particularly  the  section  in  Naegels- 
bach,  pp.  191-227.  But  I  cannot  omit  or  forbear  saying  that  the 
extant  data  are  too  rare  and  scattered  to  justify  all  the  generaliza- 
tions of  that  distinguished  scholar. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  ANGER  AND  ENVY  OF  THE  GODS.  AESCHYLUS.  HE- 
RODOTUS. WITH  SOME  PERTINENT  NOTES  ON  THE 
GREEK  CHARACTER 

As  I  move  forward  in  these  essays,  I  am  ever  guarding 
against  two  dangers  which,  like  reefs  by  the  pilot,  must 
be  avoided  by  the  present  writer,  viz.,  a  mere  anthology 
on  the  one  hand,  a  quasi-dogmatic  manual  on  the  other. 
^Eschylus  of  Athens,  like  his  contemporary  Pindar,  has 
often  been  drawn  upon  by  compilers  who  have  essayed  — 
foolishly  essayed  —  to  write  a  catechism  of  Greek  religion. 
There  is,  however,  here,  no  Isaiah  nor  Elijah,  no  John  the 
Baptist  nor  anything  which  might  remind  the  student  of 
any  prophet  or  preacher  of  righteousness.  Still  JEschylus 
is  really  one  of  the  chief  figures  in  our  survey.  It  is  often 
inspiriting  to  see  how  he  endeavors  to  endow  the  tradi- 
tional personages  of  the  Homeric  Olympus  with  a  gran- 
deur or  sovereign  worth  deducible  from  moral  qualities. 
It  is  not  to  his  discredit  that  he  fails,  as  fail  must  any 
attempt  to  maintain  the  tradition  of  the  national  Epic  and 
to  refine  it,  too. 

At  the  outset,  we  pause  for  a  necessary  premonition. 
The  seven  plays  now  reposing  in  the  famous  Codex  at 
Florence  were  by  no  means  the  only  plays  that  stern 
and  grandiose  playwright  and  stage  director  produced. 
According  to  Suidas,  he  wrote  ninety  plays,  of  which, 
however,  a  goodly  number  were  satyr-dramas :  extrava- 
ganzas, to  set  right  the  emotions  depressed  or  grieved 
by  the  gloomy  or  terrible  import  of  his  tragic  trilogies. 
Of  seventy-nine  pieces  the  titles  are  known.  "  Slices," 
or  "  cuts,"  from  the  rich  feasts  of  Homer,  ^Eschylus  called 
his  plays,  according  to  a  classic  tradition :  not  crumbs, 
then.  From  Homer  he  was  dependent,  and  a  certain  epic 

148 


149 

breadth  of  magnificent  enumeration,  a  series  of  splendid 
and  often  lofty  scenes,  rather  than  rapid  action,  mark 
most  of  his  extant  plays.  The  avoidance  of  the  mean  and 
commonplace  he  carries  to  a  very  fault.  The  great  and 
truly  soul-stirring  events  of  Marathon  and  Salamis  in 
which  he  too  stood  embattled  among  his  countrymen 
lodged  deeper  in  his  soul  than  his  dramatic  successes,  and 
found  expression  on  his  tomb  in  the  rich  isle  of  Sicily. 

That  brilliant  critic  of  Attic  letters,  Aristophanes,  in  his 
"  Frogs,"  in  405,  quite  adequately  set  forth  what  those  of 
his  countrymen  felt  ^Eschylus  to  be  for  them,  who  loved 
him  for  more  than  externalities.  Even  these  did  not  deny 
that  in  his  striving  for  the  grand  style  he  is  often  obscure, 
and  that  while  ever  desiring  to  move  on  the  lofty  cothur- 
nus, he  often  fails  to  escape  being  bizarre.  The  matchless 
pliability  of  Greek  expression  is  often  stretched  to  the 
utmost.  "  A  Titanic  wielder  of  words,"  Aristophanes  (v. 
820  sqq.)  calls  him :  "  his  breathing  is  like  that  of  a  giant " 
—  his  words,  like  huge  units  of  masonry  or  pieces  of  an  edi- 
fice, are  "fitted  together  with  bolts."  In  that  intermedi- 
ate state  between  Oriental  despotism  and  between  the  fickle 
rule  of  the  mob  he  saw  his  own  political  ideal,  and  bitterly 
resented  the  earlier  activities  of  politicians  like  Pericles 
when  they  deprived  the  venerable  court  of  the  Areopagos 
of  much  of  its  former  power  and  of  the  privilege  of  curb- 
ing and  restraining  the  restless  demos  of  Athens. 


JEschylus,  I  say,  should  not  be  judged  by  the  seven 
plays  alone.  There  is  little  or  nothing  of  any  ultra- 
spiritual  appreciation  in  the  critique  of  Aristophanes. 
Plutarch  cites  ^Eschylus  very  often  in  his  moralizing 
essays,  but  by  far  the  greater  number  of  the  citations  is 
from  plays  other  than  the  seven.  In  these  seven,  Kypris 
figures  little,  nor  is  she  endowed  with  any  beneficent 
power ;  she  is  on  the  verge,  it  would  seem,  of  a  mere 
convenient  abstraction  or  potency  of  our  common  nature, 
barely  Olympian.  And  still  that  absolute  bowing  and 
submitting  themselves  of  the  Greeks  to  the  force  of  sexual 


150  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

passion  is  met  even  in  this,  the  stateliest  and  loftiest  of 
Attic  poets  ("Athenseus,"  13,  600,  a)  ;  the  spreading  of  it 
to  cover  the  very  giant  units  of  this  cosmic  order  echoes 
the  spirit  of  Greek  mythology :  "  Fair  Heaven  loves  to 
wound  the  soil:  and  love's  desire  doth  seize  the  earth  her 
nuptials  to  attain ;  and  showers  falling  from  the  liquid 
heaven  did  kiss  the  earth:  and  she  gives  birth,  for  mor- 
tals, to  pasturage  for  sheep  and  nurture  from  Demeter: 
the  bloom  of  trees  from  moistening  espousal  is  consum- 
mated"— pretty  and  symbolically  apt,  this,  no  doubt. 
But  there  were  entire  plays  the  central  theme  of  which 
was  that  Eros,  which  is  simply  the  Greek  for  lust  or  con- 
cupiscence: such  a  one  was  his  "Kallisto,"  a  play  of  the 
"  clefts  of  Pan,"  i.e.  of  Arcadia.  Kallisto  was  a  nymph 
or  king's  daughter  there,  hunted  with  Artemis,  and  vowed 
to  remain  a  virgin  like  unto  that  deity.  But  Zeus  be- 
came enamoured  of  her  beauty,  forces  her  (see  Apollodorus, 
"  Bibliotheca,"  3,  8,  2)  to  his  lust,  assuming  the  resem- 
blance as  some  say  of  Artemis,  and  as  others,  of  Apollo. 
But  wishing  (as  usual)  to  escape  the  notice  of  his  spouse 
Hera,  he  transformed  her  into  a  she-bear,  but  Hera  per- 
suaded Artemis  to  shoot  Kallisto  to  death  as  being  a 
wild  beast,  etc.  The  guilt,  if  any,  in  this  tragedy,  must 
have  lain  on  Zeus,  the  misery,  as  usual,  on  man  or 
womankind.  The  poets  could  not  really  create  new 
legends,  nor  refine  those  much  which  had  been  handed 
down  from  the  hoary  past. 

His  "Myrmidons"  seem  to  have  dealt  with  Achilles 
and  Patroklos.  Professor  Mahaffy  regrets  the  loss  of  this 
play  particularly.  But  it  seems  from  Athenseus  not  only 
and  Plutarch,  but  from  Plato  even,  that  we  are  to  under- 
stand the  vilest  bond  as  the  central  element  in  that  classic 
friendship.  So  low  had  these  things  been  brought :  the 
loftiest  man  of  letters  in  that  state  which  had  been  tried 
as  by  fire  in  the  Persian  invasions,  that  same  JEschylus 
utters  the  common  view  of  his  own  Greek  world,  —  the 
ineradicable  ulcer,  the  Venus  Canina.  As  a  specific  and 
separate  personality,  ^Eschylus  certainly  had  a  very  cer- 
tain affinity  with  themes  and  images  lofty  and  grandiose  : 


THE  ANGER  AND  ENVY  OF  THE  GODS    151 

the  golden  gleam  indeed — perfect  content  with  the  felici- 
ties of  the  Homeric  Olympus  has  passed  away.  Little 
man  should  be  humble  and  never  forget  his  own  limita- 
tions —  thus  briefly  may  be  expressed  his  religious  philos- 
ophy, nay,  his  personal  piety.  What  he  saw  and  what  he 
lived  through  at  Marathon,  at  Salamis  and  Plataea  —  by 
all  these  things  that  reverence  was  graven  more  deeply  in 
his  soul.  And  that  testimony  is  fully  set  forth  in  his 
"  Persians,"  a  play  in  which  legend  and  history,  religion 
and  political  sentiments,  are  curiously  fused. 

Politically  speaking,  it  was  no  very  bold  conceit  for 
the  lord  of  Asia  to  have  desired  to  add  to  his  vast  em- 
pire the  little  peninsula  inhabited  by  the  tribes  of  lavan. 
Dareios  truly  had  been  a  veritable  god,  and  thus  rose  over 
his  own  generation  —  it  is  the  phrase  of  the  chorus  of  old 
Persian  councillors  —  a  god  :  but  who  knows  what  sudden 
catastrophe  some  divinity  may  have  in  store  for  Persia! 
"  AtS  (v.  97)  for  a  while,  like  a  fawning  dog,  will  draw  a 
mortal  on,  until  she  has  closed  her  snare  upon  him,  whence 
there  is  no  escape."  "  When  Xerxes  was  apprised  through 
the  cunning  private  message  (of  Themistocles)  that  the 
Greeks  would  presently  escape  from  the  channel  of  Sala- 
mis, he  did  not  perceive  the  astute  trick  of  the  Grecian 
man,  nor  the  envy  of  the  gods  ..."  (v.  362).  Fate 
was  in  store  for  him.  It  was  a  hateful  daimon  who  de- 
ceived the  minds  of  the  Persians  (472).  To  ask  the 
spirit  of  the  departed  ruler,  the  prosperous  Dareios,  to 
give  heed  to  the  offerings  and  come  up  from  the  lower 
world  for  counsel  and  consolation — it  is  that  widespread 
custom  of  asking  the  dead,  the  great  dead,  the  ^peoe?,  or 
daimons.  We  think  of  Endor,!  Samuel  18,  14  :  "And he 
said  unto  her,  what  form  is  he  of  ?  And  she  said,  An  old 
man  cometh  up  :  and  he  is  covered  with  a  mantle.  And 
Saul  perceived  that  it  was  Samuel,  and  he  stooped  with 
his  face  to  the  ground,  and  bowed  himself.  And  Samuel 
said  to  Saul :  Why  hast  thou  disquieted  me  to  bring  me 
up  ?  And  Saul  answered :  I  am  sore  distressed  :  for  the 
Philistines  make  war  against  me,  and  God  is  departed  from 
me,  and  answereth  me  no  more,  neither  by  prophets,  nor 


152  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

by  dreams :  therefore,  I  have  called  thee,  that  them  mayest 
make  known  unto  me  what  I  shall  do." 

In  Xerxes  too  there  is  that  curious  interfusion  of  guilt 
and  fate  which  strikes  us  in  the  house  of  Pelops  and  in 
the  terrible  legends  of  the  kings  of  Thebes.  It  was  bold 
wickedness  for  the  royal  son  of  Dareios  to  lay  on  the 
sacred  Hellespont  a  yoke,  as  though  he  were  a  slave  :  to 
throw  into  his  current  forged  fetters.  "Being  mortal, 
he  weened  that  he  would  subdue  all  the  gods,  and  Po- 
seidon" (v.  749).  The  great  treasure  he  inherited  un- 
balanced his  mind.  To  this  was  added  the  "  godless  spirit 
(808  sqq.)  in  which  the  invaders  shunned  not  to  commit 
sacrilege  against  the  images  of  the  gods,  and  to  burn  their 
shrines.  "  Plataea  too  is  prophesied  by  the  risen  shade  of 
Dareios  :  Plataea,  where  the  mounds  of  dead  even  to  the 
third-born  generation,  though  speechless,  to  their  eyes 
shall  signify  that  being  mortal  one  must  not  hold  over- 
weening Spirit.  "  Zeus  is  close  at  hand,  an  ever  present 
chastiser  of  thoughts  that  rise  too  high,  severe  is  his 
account"  (827). 

This  gloomy  and  distrustful  cowering  of  mankind  with- 
out the  faintest  idea  of  love  and  trust,  is  also  revealed  in 
the  Prometheus  legend.  Of  course  Hesiod  long  before 
had  given  it  the  form  and  substance  which  JEschylus 
elaborated  in  a  series  of  declamations.  It  is  indeed  a 
gloomy  view  that  material  civilization  and  the  very  refine- 
ment of  life  —  for  men  to  have  and  hold,  was  a  trespassing 
beyond  their  proper  sphere.  The  gods  of  ^Eschylus  no 
more  than  those  of  Homer  are  in  bliss  (^a*a/3e?),  nay,  are 
often  called  the  Blessed,  not  because  they  are  holy,  sinless, 
untempted,the  source  of  goodness  :  but  simply  because  they 
live  in  pleasure  for  evermore  and  because  their  existence 
is  not  terminated  by  death.  But  man  is  "for  a  day," 
ephemeral,  the  latter  word  recurring  often  in  ^Eschylus. 

As  for  Prometheus,  of  the  Titanic  order,  really  a  kind 
of  uncle  to  Zeus,  he  had  sided  with  the  new  dynasty,  but 
he  had  been,  also,  the  patron  of  the  human  kind,  and 
"  filching  the  gifts  (privilege  to  belong  to  the  gods)  (82) 
bestowed  them  upon  the  creatures  who  are  for  a  day 


THE  ANGER  AND  ENVY  OF  THE  GODS    153 

only."  Plutarch,  in  his  day,  said  Prometheus  (fore- 
thinker)  was  simply-  Computation  (\oyi<r  fjuk^) :  man's  ap- 
plication of  his  reason  to  the  utilities  of  his  physical 
environment:  simple  even  without  Plutarch's  translucent 
abstraction  :  but  why  the  furious  ill-will  of  Zeus  against 
such  a  share  of  happiness  in  man?  Our  kind  indeed  are 
in  no  wise  creatures  of  Zeus.  All  the  Olympians:  (120 
sqq.)  hate  Prometheus  "  on  account  of  his  excessive  friend- 
ship for  mortals."  Nay,  Prometheus  once  upon  a  time 
had  formed  men  of  water  and  earth :  his  creatures  they 
were,  he  was  their  benefactor,  he  faced  the  jealousy  and 
anger  of  Zeus  for  them.  The  humiliation  and  torture  on 
the  cliffs  of  Caucasus  he  bore  for  his  creatures,  for  man- 
kind. Nay,  hope  itself,  the  only  antidote  of  death,  men 
owed  to  the  same  benefactor  (250).  It  is  a  significant 
enumeration  which  we  may  well  transfer  (442  «<?<?.): 
"  Listen  to  the  sufferings  prevailing  among  mortals,  how 
when  they  at  first  were  foolish  I  rendered  them  intelligent 
and  capable  of  reflection.  And  I  will  tell  it,  not  having 
any  blame  for  men,  but  setting  forth  the  good-will  of  my 
gifts:  who  first  when  seeing  saw  in  vain,  and  hearing 
could  not  hear,  but  comparable  to  shapes  of  dreams  at 
random  and  confusedly  did  mingle  all,  their  lifelong  time, 
nor  entered  homes  brick-woven,  warm,  nor  timber  work ; 
in  caverns  sunk  in  earth  they  dwelt,  like  teeming  ants  in 
sunless  nooks  of  caves.  No  fixed  goal  had  they  of  winter 
time  nor  flowery  spring  nor  summer  rich  in  fruits,  but 
lacking  thought  did  everything,  until  I  showed  them  when 
the  stars  come  up  and  when  they  set,  a  matter  hard  to 
judge.  And  numeration,  eminent  •  device,  I  found  for 
them,  and  how  to  bind  the  signs  of  script,  a  culture-breed- 
ing tool  to  record  all.  And  first  with  yokes  I  joined  tre- 
mendous beasts  as  slaving  under  straps  in  order  that  they 
to  mortals  should  succeed,  relieving  them  of  hardest  tasks, 
and  hitched  steeds  inured  to  rein  to  draw  the  chariots, 
adornment  of  luxurious  and  excessive  wealth." 

"  Nor  aught  but  I  devised  the  carriages  of  vessels  by 
salt  sea  buffeted  with  canvas-pinions  fraught.  .  .  .  The 
greatest  this:  if  one  would  fall  into  disease,  there  was  no 


154  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

remedy:  to  eat,  to  use  as  salve  or  swallowed  potion,  but 
through  lack  of  healing  drugs  they  pined  away  until  I 
showed  them  compounds  of  soothing  remedies  with  which 
they  fend  themselves  'gainst  all  array  of  fell  disease." 
To  this  curiously  enough  ^Eschylus  adds  the  whole  range 
of  mantic  power  and  procedure:  the  interpretation  of 
dreams,  the  signs  on  journeys,  the  flight  of  birds,  their 
various  modes  of  life,  their  enmities  and  friendships:  the 
lore  of  victims'  entrails  as  to  smoothness  or  color,  and  thus 
the  implied  pleasure  or  displeasure  of  the  gods. 

Also  mineral  resources  did  he  uncover,  copper,  iron, 
silver,  gold.  To  us  it  is  a  somewhat  curious  delinea- 
tion of  human  civilization  and  progress:  particularly  the 
weighty  place  of  mantic  things.  One  smiles  at  Mahaffy's 
efforts  to  stamp  ^Eschylus  as  a  stalwart  champion  of  ad- 
vanced thought.  But,  seriously  speaking,  this  mantic 
matter,  so  essential  a  part  of  Greek  religion  so-called,  is  of 
a  piece  with  that  religion  in  its  other  aspects:  a  total  of 
ritual  things  to  better  or  to  smooth  this  terrestrial  exist- 
ence. So  ^Eschylus  presents  it,  so  it  was.  There  is  an 
appalling  paucity  of  matters  or  concerns  which  involve, 
or  appeal  to,  the  deeper,  the  spiritual  concerns  of  the 
human  soul. 

But  to  return:  how  little  after  all  does  man  owe  to 
these  Olympians:  they  are  mighty,  but  they  are  mainly 
feared. 

As  for  Zeus:  "No  one  is  free  but  Zeus"  ("Prom.,"  50). 
He  is  "  the  new  sovereign  of  the  Blessed  ones  "  (96) ;  "  a 
character  that  none  can  reach  and  a  heart  that  none  can 
sway  with  words  "  has  he  (184).  "  Rough  is  he,  and 
holds  in  his  hand  all  jurisdiction "  (186) :  "  A  rough 
monarch,  and  subject  to  no  one's  revision  does  he  hold 
sway"  (324).  "The  mouth  of  Zeus  knows  not  how  to 
utter  falsehood,  but  fulfils  each  word"  (1032).  He  is 
the  one  who  assigns  what  is  due,  who  fixes  retribution 
("Septem,"  485) :  "  Justice  is  his  virgin  daughter  "  (662). 
"  Lord  of  Lords  "  is  he,  most  Blessed  of  the  Blessed  and 
perfecting  power  most  perfect"  called,  and  called  upon 
by  the  forsaken  maidens  of  Argos  ("  Supplices,"  424). 


THE  ANGER  AND  ENVY  OF  THE  GODS    155 

"  Zeus,  whoever  he  may  be,  if  so  to  be  called  is  pleasing 
to  him,"  prays  the  chorus  in  "  Agamemnon,"  159.  The 
catastrophe  of  the  destruction  of  Troy  was  wrought  by 
the  justice  of  Zeus  (526).  But  Klytaimnestra,  too,  calls 
upon  Zeus  to  fulfil  and  accomplish  her  project  of  slaying 
her  royal  husband  with  the  help  of  her  paramour  (973). 
The  chorus  recognizes  this  universal  sway  even  amid  the 
crimes  and  horrors  of  the  king's  family  (1485). 

"If  the  only  Power  and  Justice  with  the  Third,  the 
greatest  of  them  all,  Zeus,  would  join  with  me,"  Electra 
aspires,  in  the  "Choephori,"  244.  And  more  might  be 
adduced  :  the  poet,  for  himself,  clearly  rises  and  essays 
to  ascend  to  a  conception  of  a  universal,  almighty,  and 
altogether  righteous  God,  whose  Justice  is  seated  on  the 
footsteps  of  his  throne,  even  when  we,  the  beings  for  a 
day,  behold  but  wrong  and  misery.  One  cannot  help 
thinking  of  St.  Paul's  utterance  made  in  Athens,  too, 
recorded  by  Luke  (Acts  17,  27) :  "  That  they  should  seek 
the  Lord,  if  haply  they  might  feel  after  him,  and  find 
him." 

For  indeed  the  minor  deities  of  the  Olympian  tradition 
are  of  slight  consequence  in  the  pages  of  ^Eschylus,  who, 
for  his  own  person,  clearly  was  vastly  more  spiritual  than 
the  religion  of  his  fathers  and  forefathers.  But  he  could 
not  well  divest  this  Sovereign  Deity  of  the  low  and  mean 
elements  which  stained  it  in  all  parts  of  legends. 

And  so  Zeus  figures  in  "  Prometheus  Bound "  as  the 
weak  and  ignoble  lover  of  To,  the  royal  maid  of  Argos, 
changed  to  a  heifer  by  the  husband  of  jealous  Hera,  chief 
Olympian  indeed,  but  slave  of  lust,  and  a  henpecked  hus- 
band. Zeus,  I  say,  first  beset  the  princess  with  dreams, 
less  lyrical  indeed  than  the  amorous  sonnets  of  the  earlier 
Shakespeare,  blunt  enough :  "  for  Zeus  is  warned  by  the 
shaft  of  desire  that  has  issued  from  thee  and  with  thee 
wills  to  join  in  Kypris  "  ("  Prom.,"  649).  Hesiod  began, 
as  I  suggested  before,  to  treat  and  elaborate  with  some 
moral  regard  the  Zeus  of  the  Homeric  Epics,  Pindar  was 
annoyed  by  some  of  the  traditional  fables  :  the  Attic 
dramatist  stands  on  a  positively  higher  level  than  his 


156  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

Theban  contemporary  :  but  the  primacy  of  Homer  re- 
mained undisputed,  the  Stoics,  later  on,  with  a  mass  of 
physical  and  moral  allegories,  attempted  both  to  preserve 
and  to  refine  the  Epic  tradition.  It  was  in  vain. 

A  little  more  of  the  grandiose  Athenian  must  we  ap- 
pend. The  objects  of  Greek  worship  are  —  it  cannot  be 
urged  enough  —  these  palpable  forces  of  nature  :  they  are 
not  merely  divine,  they  are  indeed  the  very  gods.  So  is 
Earth,  Graia :  "  one  shape  of  many  names,"  says  ^Eschylus 
("Prom.,"  210),  the  abiding  abode  and  support  of  life  — 
Rhea  or  Demeter  or  what  you  will:  the  thing  is  beyond 
us  :  the  terminology  our  own.  In  the  imprecation  of 
"  Zeus  and  Earth "  ("  Septem,"  69)  it  is  really  Heaven 
and  Earth,  forces  correlated  and  supreme,  which  were 
before  we  came,  and  which  go  on  being,  when  we  gasp 
out  this  fleeting  breath.  And  still  Earth  has  a  relation 
to  the  dead  —  it  is  the  abode  of  the  Perished  —  "Earth 
and  the  Perished  "  —  a  phrase  twice  met  in  the  Persians 
(220  and  523)  :  you  may  sacrifice  to  them  both  in  one 
act :  for  the  dead  somehow  still  have  a  power  over  the 
living,  to  bless  or  to  curse.  Here  we  must  append  an 
antiquarian  note  —  we  spare  our  readers  as  a  rule:  He- 
sychius  in  his  glossary  (s.v.  KpeiTTovas,  "The  more 
Powerful ")  has  this  to  say  :  "  They  call  the  heroes  (in 
G-reeTc  parlance)  so.  And  it  seems  some  of  them  are  as- 
sociated with  ill  fate.  On  this  account  also  those  who  go 
by  the  shrines  of  heroes  keep  silence,  lest  they  suffer  some 
injury."  The  Gods  also  are  so  named.  JEschylus  in  his 
play,  "  The  Women  of  JEtna."  Add  vv.  640,  687,  689; 
"  Eumenides,"  2.  Indeed  Klytaimnestra  even  after  death 
is  "  dishonored  amid  the  other  dead,  the  censure  for  her 
murder  endeth  not"  ("  Bum.,"  94  sqq.'). 

Turn  we  now  to  Ernest  Curtius's  "God  of  Light."  If 
the  spiritual  beneficence  of  that  Hellenic  figment  had  been 
actually  and  historically  as  great  as  the  fervid  extolling 
of  that  classicist  could  warrant  —  I  say  then  greater  had 
been  the  blessings  of  Greece.  Unfortunately,  the  cun- 
ning devices  and  the  vulpine  doubling  of  the  Delphian 
corporation  in  seasons  of  storm  and  stress  robbed  Loxias, 


THE  ANGER  AND  ENVY  OF  THE  GODS    157 

the  speaking  God,  of  much  credit,  even  in  the  very  times 
when  the  Pythian  priestess  mounted  the  tripod  for  the 
proper  fees.  The  Greek  legend  in  the  Wrath  of  Achilles 
makes  Apollo  a  narrow  and  vindictive  partisan  of  the 
Trojan  side  :  not  very  chivalrous  either,  in  striking 
Patroclus  from  behind  (II.,  16,  788).  He  bore  a  grudge 
against  Diomede  and  caused  him  to  lose  his  whip  in  the 
games  (II.,  23,  383).  And  why  was  the  god  of  light 
condemned  by  his  Olympian  father  to  be  a  neatherd  among 
mortal  men  for  a  while  ?  According  to  Kallimachos  it 
was  because  the  God  of  Light  was  enamoured  of  Ad- 
metos.  In  the  great  trilogy  of  the  Oresteia,  Kassandra 
even  more  *han  Agamemnon  is  a  figure  around  which 
clustered  the  awe  and  the  pity  of  the  first  spectators. 
Kassandra,  splendidly  gifted  princess  of  Troy  :  we  quote 
from  Apollodorus  ("  Bibliotheca,"  3,  12,  5)  :  "  After  this 
one,  Hekabe  gave  birth  to  these  daughters  :  Kreusa,  Lao- 
dike,  Polyxene,  Kassandra,  to  whom,  desiring  to  unite 
with  her  in  love,  Apollo  promised  to  teach  the  mantic 
art.  But  she  having  acquired  this  lore,  refused  to  grant 
these  favors,  whence  Apollo  took  from  her  mantic  art  the 
power  of  persuading  others." 

Apollo  in  the  "Eumenides"  is  a  mere  counsellor  at  law 
to  the  matricide  Orestes  and  cuts  a  poor  figure  in  the  so- 
phistical devices  of  that  role.  The  massive  and  grandiose 
jEschylus  made  poor  work  of  such  a  task. 


The  grave  matter  of  the  Third  and  Fourth  Generation 
is  brought  forward  in  the  trilogy  just  named  as  it  is  in 
the  plays  concerning  (Edipus  and  the  woes  of  Thebes,  dull 
Thebes,  the  quick  witted  Athenians  were  wont  to  say:  but 
the  cluster  of  deep  and  sombre  legends  grown  on  the  soil  of 
Boeotia  far  outweighs  the  slender  production  of  the  thin 
and  rocky  soil  of  Attica.  A  mystery  after  all  is  the 
curse  steadily  attending  the  successive  generations  of  cer- 
tain families.  And  so  at  Thebes:  "hated  of  Phoebus  the 
entire  race  of  Laios  "  ("  Septem,"  691).  "  Who  could  de- 
vise cleansing  rites,  who  could  wash  them?  O  miseries 


158  TESTTMONIUM  ANDLE 

new  of  the  palace  fused  with  ancient  ills"  ("Septem,"  738). 
One  generation  cursed  its  own  offspring.  We  must,  how- 
ever, be  brief.  Notice,  if  you  please,  both  in  the  royal 
castle  of  Thebes  as  well  as  at  Argos  the  grave  and  weighty 
matter  of  an  initial  sin  and  first  step  in  wrong-doing. 
Take  the  Argivian  dynasty  with  their  sire :  Tantalos, 
Pelops,  Atreus-Thyestes,  Pleisthenes,  Agamemnon,  Mene- 
laos,  and  their  cousin  Aigisthos.  Tantalos  (immensely 
rich),  a  fellow-banqueter  with  the  gods,  in  his  mad  inso- 
lence attempts  to  have  them  feast  on  his  own  son  Pelops. 
The  latter,  miraculously  restored  to  life,  emigrates  to 
southern  Greece,  henceforth  named  after  him:  his  great 
wealth  in  those  primitive  times  gives  him  swift  preemi- 
nence. He  wooes  Hippodameia,  the  much-sought  daughter 
of  Oinomaos  of  Elis:  to  gain  the  decisive  race,  Pelops  prom- 
ises rewards  wicked  in  themselves  to  the  king's  charioteer 
JVIyrtilos:  but  instead  of  keeping  his  word,  the  immi- 
grant prince  caused  the  guilty  Myrtilos  to  drown  on  the 
coast  of  Eubo3a.  His  sons  Atreus  and  Thyestes  mur- 
dered their  brother  Chrysippos,  envied  of  them  because 
of  the  particular  affection  shown  him  by  the  old  king. 
Thyestes  seduces  his  brother  Atreus's  wife,  and  is  expelled 
by  the  latter.  From  abroad  he,  Thyestes,  then  sends 
the  son  of  Pleisthenes,  whom  Thyestes  had  reared  as  his 
own  child,  that  Pleisthenes  should  slay  his  real  father, 
Atreus.  But  things  go  so  that  Atreus  kills  Pleisthenes, 
his  own  son,  as  though  he  were  his  nephew.  Atreus  then, 
to  accomplish  his  revenge,  assumes  the  guise  of  recon- 
ciliation and  recalls  his  brother  Thyestes  from  exile.  But 
Thyestes  resumes  his  intrigue  with  his  brother's  wife 
-5£rope.  Atreus  now  slays  the  sons  of  Thyestes  and  sets 
their  flesh  before  their  own  father:  Thyestes  hastens  into 
a  northern  exile,  cursing  all  the  race  of  Pelops. 

When  barrenness  and  famine  visited  the  land  of  Atreus, 
the  oracle  directed  the  latter  to  recall  Thyestes  from  ex- 
ile. But  Atreus  only  found  the  latter's  daughter  Pelo- 
pia,  then  with  child  through  her  own  father's  violent 
crime.  Atreus  considers  Pelopia  the  daughter  of  a  north- 
ern king  and  brings  her  home  as  his  wife,  where  she 


THE  ANGER  AND  ENVY  OF  THE  GODS         159 

gives  birth  to  Aigisthos.  But  why  go  on  with  these  hor- 
rors, most  of  which  seem  composed  by  Greek  poets  after 
the  consummation  of  the  Homeric  Epics  ?  The  legend  of 
CEdipus  is  much  better  known  to  the  general  reader.  Note 
here,  too,  the  initial  sin,  the  original  wrong.  Laios,  a 
prince  of  Thebes,  sojourning  in  the  Peloponnesos,  in  exile, 
gains  the  hospitality  of  Pelops  which,  however,  he  re- 
quites but  ill.  He  becomes  enamoured  of  Pelops's  son 
Chrysippos,  whom  he  pretends  to  teach  the  art  of  driving 
a  chariot.  Thus  he  finds  an  opportunity  to  carry  him 
away  by  force  to  Thebes.  This  was,  among  the  Hellenes, 
the  beginning  of  the  national  ulcer  which  never  healed. 
Chrysippos  slew  himself  for  shame.  Pelops  uttered  a  ter- 
rible curse  against  the  robber.  Later  Laios  became  King 
of  Thebes  and  married  locaste.  Their  son  was  GEdipus, 
creator  and  bearer  of  woe  unutterable. 

Before  passing  from  the  great  and  massive  figure  of 
^Eschylus,  whom,  by  the  by,  Cicero  called  a  Pythagorean, 
we  may  well  pause  to  ask  ourselves  as  to  the  moral  ele- 
ments in  the  Attic  tragedies  at  large.  In  recent  times 
sober-minded  scholars  have  wisely  resolved  to  strip  off  the 
straight  jacket  of  the  Aristotelian  definition  or  inductive 
abstraction.  I  recall  distinctly  that  Adolph  Kirchhoff  in 
my  Berlin  days  (1872-1874)  very  positively  refused  to 
measure  all  Attic  plays  by  that  yard  measure.  It  has 
very  properly  been  pointed  out,  that  the  range  of  emotions 
stirred  by  tragedy  is  much  wider  than  Aristotle's  pair  of 
awe  or  fear  and  pity  (Wilamowitz):  there  is,  e.g.,  patriot- 
ism, there  is  devotion,  there  is,  I  may  add,  humiliation,  nay, 
moral  mortification,  as  we  are  confronted  with  the  weak- 
ness and  the  temptations  of  our  common  nature.  Here, 
too,  we  must  unreservedly  assent  to  the  strictures  of  the 
Berlin  Hellenist:  the  subject-matter  of  the  Greek  legends 
was  the  given  material  of  these  plays,  which  the  dramatists 
had  to  employ,  which  they  could  not  essentially  modify. 


My  warrant   for   presenting    Herodotus   in  this  same 
chapter,  as  the  second  picture  in  a  diptych,  is  this:  This 


160  TESTTMONIUM  ANBLE 

genial  historian,  genial  though  he  be,  and  entertaining 
though  he  strive  to  be  continuously,  has  this  in  common 
with  ^Eschylus  :  everywhere  he  records  the  great  events 
of  the  Persian  wars  with  a  profoundly  religious  awe :  he  be- 
lieves in  a  divine  regulation  of  human  events.  While  he 
delights  in  bright  and  sunny  things  and  a  certain  quiet 
humor  is  lambent  around  his  cheerful  and  bubbling  narra- 
tive, no  writer  of  classical  antiquity  is  there  in  whom 
there  occurs  so  incessantly  and  with  such  impressive 
gloom  that  stern  and  awful  Leitmotiv,  viz.,  of  the  Envy 
of  the  Gods,  the  central  theme  of  the  "Prometheus 
Bound"  :  a  theme  .in  the  Halicarnassian  reciter  carried 
into  the  very  marrow  of  actual  life  and  elevated,  so 
to  speak,  into  a  veritable  Philosophy  of  History. 

And  first,  this  author  was  an  author  whose  authorship 
was  built  largely  on  his  travels  and  what  he  could  see 
with  his  own  eyes,  hear  with  his  own  ears.  Asia  and 
Egypt  he  traversed:  Susa  and  Babylon  he  visited,  he 
gazed  upon  the  stupendous  ruins  of  Nineveh :  he  tested 
the  thickness  of  Egyptian  and  Persian  skulls  on  a  battle- 
field of  the  wonderful  kingdom  of  the  Nile,  he  was  initi- 
ated in  the  mysteries  of  Osiris,  and  measured  the  mighty 
pyramid  of  Chephren.  Nor  was  he  unacquainted  with 
Kyrene  and  with  the  entire  periphery  of  the  Euxine.  His 
second  home  he  made  in  Magna  Graecia,  at  Thurioi.  Few 
Greeks  had  so  wide  and  so  genuine  an  acquaintance  with 
general  mankind,  few  ever  were  as  open  and  fair  as  the 
wanderer  of  Halicarnassus,  to  value  and  appreciate  human 
culture.  And  here  he  was  far  superior  to  the  narrow 
conceit  of  Hellenism  at  large  as  well  as  to  the  cantonal 
and  local  pride  of  the  Greek  communities,  tribes,  and  dia- 
lects. 

Since  this  is  so,  he  exhibits  to  us  in  a  manner  most  wel- 
come for  our  general  theme  many  sides  of  what  I  may 
call  the  typical  Greek  consciousness.  For  it  is  well  for 
us  to  examine  this  matter  and  it  is  my  duty  to  help  destroy 
that  modern  figment  of  the  "  pure  humanity,"  of  the  typi- 
cal humanity  of  the  Hellenes,  in  fact,  that  production  of 
literary  fancy  and  tradition,  "  Greekdom "  itself.  Thus 


THE  ANGER  AND  ENVY  OF  THE  GODS    161 

he  notes  the  belief  of  the  Egyptians  that  they  were  the 
first  human  beings  created  (2,  2)  ;  that  there  were  no 
priestesses  in  Egypt  (2,  35)  ;  that  the  Egyptians  were  the 
first  to  maintain  the  statement  that  the  soul  of  man  is 
immortal,  and  that  when  the  body  perishes  the  soul  enters 
into  another  living  being,  and  that  when  the  soul  has  made 
the  rounds  of  all  the  beasts  of  land  and  sea  and  air,  it  enters 
again  into  a  human  body  at  the  moment  of  birth  and  that 
this  circular  tour  is  accomplished  in  three  thousand  years. 
It  was  a  presumption,  Herodotus  adds,  that  some  Greeks 
claimed  this  doctrine  as  specifically  their  own  (2,  123). 
He  is  struck  by  the  fact  that  the  Thracians  do  not  hold 
thunder  and  lightning  in  awe,  "but  discharging  their 
arrows  upward  into  the  sky  threaten  the  God,  believing  in 
no  other  God  but  their  own  "  (4,  94).  The  king  of  the 
Scythians  recognizes  as  master  but  Zeus,  his  own  ancestor 
(4,  127).  The  Libyans  sacrifice  to  Sun  and  Moon  only  (4, 
188).  A  certain  tribe  among  the  Thracians  bewails  each 
infant  at  birth,  relating  (quite  in  the  manner  of  Hamlet's 
famous  monologue)  all  the  sufferings  of  human  kind, 
while  the  dead  they  conceal  in  the  earth  amid  sport  and 
rejoicing,  recounting  all  the  evils  of  which  the  deceased  is 
then  freed  and  now  dwells  in  all  bliss  (5,  4).  Herodotus 
treats  many  of  the  religious  doctrines  of  Egypt  with  re- 
spectful awe  (4,  2,  3) ;  he  evidently  respects  the  reasons 
of  the  Egyptians  for  worshipping  animals  (transmigration 
of  souls).  He  was  himself  initiated  in  the  mysteries  of 
Samothrake  (2,  51)  and  as  regarding  Hellenic  worship  and 
mythology  our  traveller  had  quite  freed  himself  from  the 
notions  of  Greek  originality.  He  weighed  the  influence 
of  the  Pelasgians  who  were  in  central  Greece  before  the 
Greeks  came  down  from  the  north.  With  so  wide  a  vision, 
and  living  a  little  after  the  zenith  of  things  Greek,  his 
view  of  Hesiod  and  Homer  remains  most  precious  to  the 
modern  student  (2,  53).  I  have  fully  brought  this  matter 
forward  in  my  third  chapter.  The  Greek  poets  indeed 
were  makers  in  more  senses  than  one.  Herodotus  has 
written  his  own  sentiments  and  his  own  type  of  soul  quite 
freely  into  his  work :  when  the  endless  myriads  of  the 


162  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

Orient,  under  King  Xerxes,  crossed  the  Hellespont,  that 
monarch  first  called  himself  happy,  but  soon  tears  welled 
up :  "  as  I  have  computed  it  came  over  me  that  I  felt  com- 
punction of  pity,  if  of  this  vast  number  no  one  will  survive 
to  his  hundredth  year"  (7,  46).  In  a  free  dramatic  way 
Herodotus  presents  his  dread  and  humility  through  an  uncle 
of  King  Xerxes,  Artabanus :  "  and  he  replied,  saying  :  other 
things  more  woful  than  these  do  we  suffer  in  the  course 
of  our  lives.  Short  as  this  life  is,  there  is  not  one  human 
being  so  happy  in  his  essence,  neither  of  these  nor  of  the 
others,  to  whom  the  thought  will  not  present  itself,  often- 
times, not  once  only,  that  he  would  rather  be  dead  than 
live  (Hamlet  again).  For  the  disasters  that  befall  it  and 
the  diseases  that  confound  it  cause  life,  even  though  it  be 
short,  to  seem  long.  Thus  Death,  as  Life  is  full  of  burdens, 
has  come  to  be  the  choicest  refuge  for  man ;  but  G-od,  having 
allowed  us  to  taste  the  sweetness  of  life,  is  found  to  be  envious 
in  it."  It  is  the  voice  of  the  chorus  in  the  orchestra,  warn- 
ing the  protagonist  who  passes  over  the  stage  on  his  raised 
cothurnus. 

Solon  and  Croesus  —  the  world  has  long  appropriated 
their  dialogues  about  human  power  and  happiness.  In 
these  legends,  Herodotus  in  a  manner  ranges  himself  not 
unworthily  as  an  eighth  Sage,  fitted  to  rank  and  to  be  hon- 
ored with  the  canonic  Seven  Wise  Men.  Solon  is  walking 
through  the  treasure  chambers  of  King  Croesus  and  with- 
holding from  the  richest  of  mortals  the  verdict  of  the 
greatest  happiness. 

The  happiest  then  was  Tellos  of  Athens  (1,  30  s<?.):  ne 
lived  to  a  good  old  age,  while  his  native  commonwealth 
was  going  along  well ;  he  saw  none  of  his  children  dying 
and  saw  them  all  with  children  of  their  own,  and  per- 
ished in  battling  for  Athens.  He  was  the  happiest.  Next 
were  Kleobis  and  Biton  of  Argos.  These  were  crowned 
athletes,  and  once  when  their  mother,  priestess  of  Hera, 
wanted  to  ride  to  the  fane  and  the  oxen  were  not  ready 
from  the  pasture,  then  the  young  men  themselves  drew 
their  mother  to  the  sanctuary,  a  distance  of  five  and  forty 
stadia  (eight  and  a  half  miles).  When  they  had  done  this 


THE  ANGER  AND  ENVY  OF  THE  GODS    163 

and  had  been  beheld  by  the  festal  assembly  —  both  their 
prowess  and  their  filial  devotion  —  their  mother  stepped 
before  the  agalma  of  Hera  (the  idol)  and  prayed  that  the 
goddess  would  give  her  sons  that  which  is  best  for  a 
human  being  to  obtain.  The  youths  thereupon  after  sac- 
rificing and  feasting  fell  asleep  in  the  sanctuary  and  awoke 
no  more  —  and  thus  "  the  deity  pointed  out  (1,  31)  that  it 
is  better  for  man  to  be  dead  than  to  live."  Threescore 
years  and  ten,  Herodotus  goes  on  moralizing,  is  the  span 
of  human  life  :  and  every  single  day  in  these  seventy  years 
is  subject  to  accident  or  disaster.  "Man  indeed  is  all 
accident "  (1,  32). 

We  must  wait  for  the  conclusion  of  each  individual  life 
before  we  can  praise  it,  the  vicissitudes  of  the  remainder 
lying  before  us  are  simply  incalculable.  But  let  me  pro- 
ceed further  to  set  forth  the  interfusion  of  moral  and 
religous  ideas  in  this  well-informed  and  deeply  reflecting 
historian. 

The  Persians  besieged  Potidsea  on  the  Thracian  coast. 
But  the  siege  corps  was  cut  in  twain  by  the  sudden  rising 
of  the  tide  (8,  129),  —  a  very  extraordinarily  great  tide,  — 
the  besieged  put  out  in  boats  and  slew  that  corps. 

The  Persians  (who  despised  Greek  polytheism)  had 
committed  acts  of  impiety  on  the  temple  of  the  God 
Poseidon  and  on  the  idol.  Herodotus  cordially  agrees 
with  the  allegation  of  the  people  of  Potidsea  that  their 
tutelary  deity  imposed  revenge.  Cyrus  called  down  from 
the  pyre  his  royal  victim  Croesus,  "reflecting  (1,  86)  that 
he  himself,  being  a  human  being,  was  in  the  act  of  giving 
to  the  fire  alive  another  human  being,  who  had  not  been 
inferior  to  himself  in  happiness,  and  in  addition  thereto 
fearing  the  punishment,  and  considering  that  no  element 
of  human  affairs  was  safe."  Schiller  has  made  the  Ring 
of  Polykrates  a  household  word  among  Germans  by  his 
splendid  ballad :  in  the  Rousseau  period  the  protagonists 
of  culture  elevated  classics  on  the  one  hand  and  the 
South  Sea  islanders  on  the  other  in  their  quest  of  a  "  pure 
humanity."  The  Greek  autocrat,  indeed,  had  prospered 
most  uncommonly  among  his  generation,  but  his  friend 


164  TESTIMOXIUM  ANEVLE 

Amasis  of  Egypt  wrote  to  him  as  follows  (3,  40) :  "  Pleas- 
ant indeed  is  it  to  learn  that  a  friend  and  guest  friend  is 
faring  well :  but  your  great  bursts  of  good  fortune  please 
me  not,  as  I  know  the  deity  how  jealous  it  is  ;  and  my  de- 
sire on  the  whole  is  this,  that  those  for  whom  I  am  con- 
cerned may,  in  some  portion  of  their  affairs,  be  prosperous, 
and  in  some  other  portion  slip  up,  and  thus  live  through 
their  lives,  faring  alternately  well  and  ill,  rather  than  be 
prosperous  in  everything.  For  I  know  of  no  one  of  whom 
I  have  heard  tell,  who  in  the  end  did  not  terminate  his 
existence  badly,  root  and  all,  when  he  had  been  (before) 
prosperous  in  all  things.  You  therefore  heed  my  word, 
and  with  a  view  to  your  series  of  prosperities  do  the 
following :  think  of  that  which  you  find  to  be  your  most 
precious  possession,  and  the  perishing  of  which  will  cause 
your  soul  the  greatest  grief,  and  this  cast  away  so  that  it 
never  more  arrive  among  men." 

The  ring  we  know  was  chosen,  cast  into  the  sea,  and 
brought  back  by  the  fisherman  and  the  cook. 

But  this  was  not  yet  the  end  of  Polykrates.  His  lust 
for  gold  lured  him  to  the  mainland  of  Lydia  where  he 
became  the  prey  of  the  cunning  satrap  Oroites.  The 
soothsayers  indeed  had  urged  Polykrates  not  to  go.  And 
particularly  his  daughter  dreamed,  and  her  vision  was 
this :  it  seemed  to  her  that  her  father  was  suspended  in 
air  and  was  washed  by  Zeus  and  was  anointed  by  the  Sun. 
Her  warnings,  however,  were  all  in  vain.  The  prince  of 
Samos  steered  for  the  mainland  :  he  then  went  to  Magne- 
sia, where  the  satrap  was.  This  official  put  Polykrates  to 
death  in  a  manner  too  shocking  to  relate  and  raised  his 
corpse  upon  a  cross :  .  .  .  and  as  he  was  hung  up  there, 
he  fulfilled  all  the  vision  of  his  daughter  ;  for  he  was 
washed  by  Zeus  whenever  it  rained,  and  he  was  anointed 
by  the  Sun  himself,  causing  liquid  substance  to  ooze 
forth.  The  many  good  fortunes  then  of  Polykrates  had 
this  consummation  as  Amasis  the  king  of  Egypt  had 
prophesied  (3,  125).  Herodotus,  surveying  with  a 
glance  the  span  of  the  Grecian  past,  says  that  the 
princes  of  Syracuse  alone  excelled  the  Samian  in  splen- 


THE  ANGER  AND  ENVY  OF  THE  GODS    165 

dor,  a  splendor  largely  due  to  the  persistent  policy  which 
Polykrates  had  pursued :  the  upbuilding  of  a  great  sea 
power.  In  this  he  had  followed  Minos,  the  fabled  king 
of  Krete,  and  he  became  the  precursor  of  Athens,  of 
Rhodes,  of  Karthage,  of  Venice,  and  of  the  British  Isles. 
Elsewhere  in  the  pages  of  Herodotus  we  find  the  follow- 
ing :  Pheretime,  the  mother  of  Arkesilas,  prince  of  Kyrene, 
indeed  took  terrible  revenge  on  the  people  of  Barke ; 
but  hardly  had  she  returned  from  Libya  to  Egypt  (4,  205), 
"  when  she  died  badly :  for  out  of  her  living  body  worms 
swarmed  in  teeming  multitudes,  since  excessively  severe 
acts  of  punishment  are  an  object  of  jealousy  or  odium  on  the 
part  of  the  gods ."  But  all  this  and  many  other  data  in 
Herodotus  are  merely,  as  I  have  intimated,  iterations  and 
reverberation  of  the  stern  melody  of  human  excess  and 
divine  retribution  and  the  humiliation  of  man,  exemplified 
most  signally  and  most  significantly  in  Xerxes  himself. 
Thus  we  return  to  Artabanos,  from  whose  lips  comes  the 
wisdom  of  JEschylus  and  of  Herodotus  :  "  Thou  seest 
(7,  10,  5)  how  the  deity  strikes  with  the  thunderbolt 
those  beasts  that  tower  above  their  fellows,  but  the  little 
ones  worry  him  not:  and  you  see  also  how  his  missiles 
always  smite  the  largest  edifices  and  trees  of  such  kind. 
For  God  loves  to  truncate  all  those  things  that  rise  too 
high.  Thus  too  a  large  army  may  be  destroyed  by  a 
small  one  in  some  such  way  :  when  God  in  his  jealousy 
casts  a  panic  or  a  thunderbolt,  through  which  they  were 
destroyed  in  a  shocking  manner.  For  Grod  does  not  per- 
mit any  one  to  entertain  grand  ideas  but  himself." 

It  is  but  a  slight  step  from  this  to  gloomy  fate  and 
to  the  evil  end  of  uncommon  individual  men :  "  It  was 
necessary"  "  it  was  fated  "  that  the  Scythian  king  Skyles 
should  perish  evilly  (4,  79).  "It  was  fated  that  Mil- 
tiades,  once  a  prince  in  a  colony,  and  foremost  at  Mara- 
thon, should  come  to  an  evil  end"  (6,  135). 

It  is  God  himself  who  causes  human  folly :  thus  Cyrus 
asks  of  the  Lydian  king  (1,  87)  :  "  Croesus,  what  human 
being  induced  you  to  make  a  campaign  against  my  coun- 
try and  become  a  foe  to  me  instead  of  a  friend  ? "  "  O 


166  TESTIMOXIUM  ANBLE 

King,"  said  he,  "I  did  this  through  your  good  fortune 
and  through  my  own  ill  fortune.  And  the  cause  of  this 
was  the  God  of  the  Greeks  (Apollo)  rousing  me  to  make 
the  expedition." 

And  this  may  well  introduce  another  theme  pertinent 
to  this  essay,  viz.,  the  attitude  of  Herodotus  to  Greek 
worship  in  general  and  to  the  oracles  in  particular.  In 
his  pages  we  see  everywhere  reverence  for  all  oracles,  of 
Delphi,  Alai,  Dodona,  or  written  oracles  copied  and  propa- 
gated out  of  the  past,  greatly  tempting  the  forger  to 
modify  or  to  invent,  as  Onomakritos  was  an  editor  and 
an  interpolator  of  oracles  at  the  court  of  the  prince 
Hippias  at  Athens  (7,  6) ;  there  were  indeed  spurious 
oracles  in  circulation  (1,  66,  75  ;  5,  91).  On  the  whole, 
Herodotus  is  a  stanch  defender  of  Delphi.  And  this  is 
the  more  noteworthy  because  early  in  480  B.C.  the  Del- 
phian corporation  had  clearly  despaired  of  the  cause  of 
Greek  freedom.  A  foreign  office  of  the  interests  of  the 
Hellenic  world,  the  curious  self-perpetuating  body  at 
Delphi  was  better  informed  of  things  transpiring  in  Asia 
than  any  single  Greek  commonwealth.  Herodotus  credits 
his  favorite  state  of  Athens  with  a  stanch  patriotism  all 
the  greater  because  awe-inspiring  responses  came  from 
the  Pythian  centre  (7,  129),  responses  which  might  well 
have  moved  a  community  less  intrepid  to  abandon  all  and 
seek  a  new  home  in  the  west.  Vividly  the  second  oracle 
presents  the  Homeric  religion  in  all  essentials  (cf.  Her., 
2,  53),  the  current  standard  of  Greek  worship  in  480; 
Athena  has  interceded  for  her  own  Athens  with  Zeus, 
but  in  vain  (7,  141)  :  "  Pallas  is  not  puissant  to  assuage 
the  Olympian  Zeus,  though  she  entreats  him  with  many 
utterances  and  cunning  design."  I  say  on  the  whole  our 
historian  is  very  loyal  to  Delphi,  although  he  knew  that 
powerful  politicians  in  the  past  had  tampered  with  the 
oracle,  as  had  Kleomenes  of  Sparta  (6,66;  cf.  5,  63;  6,75). 
Herodotus  defends  the  oracle  given  to  Croesus:  the  fault 
was  the  Lydian  king's,  not  Apollo's  (1,  91)  ;  cf .  the  oracle 
given  to  Siphnos,  defended  and  interpreted  by  Herodotus 
himself  (3,  58)  ;  the  oracle  given  to  Thera  (4,  150,  151). 


THE  ANGER  AND  ENVY  OF  THE  GODS    167 

The  evening  of  life  for  the  Father  of  History  was  gloomy 
enough.  The  long  struggle  among  Greek  common- 
wealths, known  to  us  as  the  Peloponnesian  War,  had 
begun.  Our  historian  was  an  earnest  champion  of  Athens 
and  lost  no  opportunity  in  his  narrative  to  argue  with 
deliberate  emphasis  as  a  pleader  for  Athens,  and  to  urge 
that  on  her  policy  and  self-sacrifice  the  very  maintenance 
of  Greek  independence  turned,  not  only  in  480,  but  also 
in  479  as  well. 

Now  we  have  derived  not  a  little  stirring  of  nobler 
emotions  from  the  spectacle  of  Leonidas  in  the  pass  of 
Thermopylae:  the  very  emancipation  of  modern  Greece 
from  Turkey  was  powerfully  aided  in  1827  and  before  by 
the  enthusiastic  sympathies  of  classicism,  although  the 
modern  Greeks  are,  without  any  doubt,  essentially  and 
substantially  Slavic.  But  there  is  little,  apart  from 
Leonidas  and  a  few  others,  that  deserves  our  moral  enthu- 
siasm in  the  pitiable  history  of  the  Greek  commonwealths. 
The  incredible  pettiness  and  narrowness  of  their  actual 
political  feeling  and  aims  you  cannot  palliate  nor  explain 
away.  And  this  was  often  curiously  bound  up  with,  nay, 
rooted  in  the  traditional  local  fancies  and  mythical  legends. 
Thus  in  a  quarrel  between  Athens  and  Mitylene  concern- 
ing Sigeion  in  the  Troad,  the  Attic  contention  cited  the 
records  of  the  Wrath  of  Achilles  (Her.,  5,  94).  No 
bitterer  arraignment  of  the  general  Greek  character  is 
found  anywhere  than  in  Herodotus  himself,  although  he 
puts  the  utterance  into  the  mouth  of  a  Persian  councillor: 
"  The  Greeks  are  jealous  of  prosperity  and  hate  greater 
power"  (7, 236) .  In  431  the  jealousy  and  malice  of  cantonal 
and  topical  feeling  had  made  it  well-nigh  impossible  for 
an  historian  to  allot  praise  or  blame  in  reciting  the  great 
events  of  half  a  century  before.  Thus,  as  to  Salamis, 
the  Athenians  gave  an  evil  account  of  the  Corinthian 
commander,  while  Themistocles  accepted  a  goodly  purse 
from  Eubceans,  a  bribe  of  which  he  kept  the  lion's 
share,  while  giving  minor  portions  to  other  Greek  com- 
manders (8,  5). 

The  reply  of   the  Athenians   to  the  Spartans  (before 


168  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

Platsea)  was  indeed  fervid  and  lofty.  But  no  doubt 
many  of  his  contemporaries  called  Herodotus  a  prejudiced 
partisan  of  Athens.  A  severe  arraignment  too  lies  in  the 
advice  of  the  Boaotians  to  Mardonius  to  make  his  camp 
in  their  own  territory  and  move  no  farther  to  the  south  : 
and  "  if  you  will  do  what  we  recommend,  you  will  possess 
yourself  of  their  designs  without  trouble.  Send  money  to 
the  men  who  are  powerful  in  the  several  communities;  if 
you  do  so  you  will  rend  Greece:  thereafter  you  will  easily 
with  poor  troops  subjugate  those  that  do  not  side  with 
you  "  (9,  2).  King  Philip  did  so,  later  on. 

In  479,  before  Plataea,  when  the  fate,  of  Greek  indepen- 
dence was  still  in  the  balance,  the  Spartiats  at  home  cele- 
brated their  Hyakinthia.  What  was  this  celebration  ? 
Hyakinthos  was  a  youth  of  Amyklai  in  Lacedsemon,  of 
surpassing  fairness,  object  too  of  the  love  —  what  the 
Greeks  understood  that  term  to  mean  —  of  Apollo.  Well, 
this  too  was  commemorated  at  the  celebration.  Such 
were  the  Spartiats,  flower  of  the  Dorian  race.  As  to  the 
crisis  of  479,  unless  we  should  reject  the  presentation  of 
Herodotus  utterly,  they  contemplated  with  equanimity 
the  possibility  of  seeing  Athens  extinguished. 

It  is  a  custom  among  classicists  to  say  that  the  Grrceculus 
of  Cicero's  time,  of  Lucian's  age,  was  greatly  changed 
and  had  deteriorated  from  the  type  of  the  Persian  wars, 
of  Perikles,  of  Agesilaos,  and  of  Epaminondas.  I  do  not 
think  so. 

The  fervor  and  cultural  enthusiasm  of  Cicero  indeed 
was  strong  ;  he  was  an  uncompromising  Philhellene  :  but 
his  valuation  of  their  moral  character  was  low  :  prevarica- 
tion and  duplicity  he  held  were  almost  a  national  charac- 
teristic :  "  the  scrupulous  regard  for  evidence  in  court  and 
good  faith  that  race  never  cherished  "  ("  Pro  Flacco,"  9). 
"  The  quarrelling  about  a  phrase  has  ever  been  keeping  in 
unrest  the  poor  Greeks,  men  more  eager  for  strife  than  for 
truth  "  ("  De  Oratore,"  I,  47).  Action  indeed  was  denied 
them  in  his  day,  erudition  and  rhetoric  were  still  their 
resources.  The  Pindaric  ideals  lasted  on  :  "  to  have 
gained  a  victory  at  Olympia  among  the  Greeks  is  almost 


THE  ANGER  AND  ENVY  OF  THE  GODS    169 

greater  and  more  glorious  than  at  Rome  to  have  gained  a 
triumph"  ("Pro  Flacco,"  13). 

As  to  the  influence  of  the  gymnasia  observed  by  Cicero, 
it  was  bad  then,  it  was  supremely  vicious  in  Plato's  time, 
in  Pindar's  time,  probably  at  all  times.  Here  there  was 
no  decline :  merely  a  maintenance  of  a  pestilential  evil. 

The  truth  is  that  the  Macedonian  hegemony  and  the 
development  of  Greek  empires  in  Egypt,  Syria,  and  Per- 
gamos;  the  rise  of  that  ancient  Venice,  the  naval  power 
of  Rhodes;  the  world  position  of  Alexandria;  the  conti- 
nental eminence  of  Antioch,  the  new  economic  drift  in 
trade  and  traffic  —  left  Athens  and  ^Egina,  Naupaktos, 
Corcyra,  and  Corinth  in  the  stiller  eddies  of  the  current 
where  foam  and  driftwood  gather.  Central  Greece  be- 
came impoverished  and  lived  on  the  memories  of  the  past, 
long  before  Hadrian  became  the  patron  of  a  manifold  re- 
naissance, or  before  Pausanias  the  traveller  observed  the 
fallen-in  roofs  of  many  an  ancient  temple,  or  before  Pliny 
wrote  that  the  pasturage  for  sacrificial  cattle  had  no  mar- 
ket value  any  more.  The  Greeks  of  the  beginning  of  the 
Christian  era,  I  say,  were  not  more  ignoble  than  those  of 
Aristophanes,  or  than  the  miserable  democracy  that  ap- 
plauded Demosthenes  and  ignored  him  too,  that  gave  the 
hemlock  to  Socrates  and  was  led  by  the  nose  by  cunning 
demagogues  at  will,  whose  cultural  opportunities  made 
them  fond  of  dialectic  fencing,  and  whose  immense  aggre- 
gation of  extraordinary  art  had  no  real  or  palpable  enno- 
bling influence  upon  them.  They  were  the  same;  they 
were  not  worse,  at  least.  For  Seneca  is  entirely  right 
when  he  says:  "These  (inborn  qualities)  no  philosophical 
culture  "  ("  Epistula,"  11)  "  will  drive  away."  Many  of  the 
talented  men  of  central  Greece  went  to  the  marts  of 
Alexandria,  Syracuse,  or  Antioch,  while  the  old  places 
sank  into  decay.  There  is  a  memorable  glimpse  of  that 
process  in  a  letter  written  to  Cicero  when  the  latter 
mourned  for  his  daughter  Tullia,  a  letter  addressed  to  the 
orator  by  the  eminent  jurist,  Sulpicius  Rufus  ("Ad  Fa- 
miliares,"  4,  5) :  "  Returning  from  the  province  of  Asia, 
when  I  was  sailing  from  ^Egina  towards  Megara,  I  began 


170  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

to  look  out  upon  the  regions  round  about.  Behind  me 
was  .J^gina;  before  me  Megara;  on  my  right,  the  Piraeus; 
on  my  left,  Corinth:  towns  which  once  upon  a  time  were 
so  flourishing;  now  they  lie  before  our  eyes  prostrate  and 
tumbled  down.  I  began  to  reflect  in  my  own  heart: 
well!  we  poor  manikins  are  hot  if  some  one  of  us  has  died  or 
been  stricken  with  the  sword,  whose  life  must  needs  be 
briefer,  when  in  one  spot  the  corpses  of  so  many  towns 
are  lying  on  the  ground!"  (written  in  45  B.C.). 


NOTE. —  Of  ^Eschylus,  as  of  many  other  classical  writers,  our 
present  and  actual  judgment  would  be  probably  not  a  little  modified 
if  we  had  his  entire  vast  production.  We  would  probably  esteem  him 
less.  The  grammatikos,  however,  of  both  Alexandrine  and  Byzantine 
era  could  not  avail  himself  of  many  plays,  he  had  to  proceed  eclecti- 
cally.  The  poet's  fatalism,  his  divine  preordination  of  Sin  and  Evil 
was  vigorously  rejected  by  Plato  ("  Republic,"  2,  380,  a)  :  "  Nor  must 
we  permit  our  young  to  hear  that  God  makes  the  cause  for  mortals 
whenever  he  wills  utterly  to  injure  a  house  "  (in  the  "  Niobe  "). 

Cicero  calls  the  poet  a  Pythagorean  philosopher,  "  Tusculan  Dis- 
put.'"  2,23:  "non  poeta  solum,  sed  etiam  Pythagoreus;  sic  enim 
accepimus." 

^schylus's  personal  political  sentiments  (Persians,  241  sqq. ).  Athens 
glorified  for  Salamis  (Pers.,  285,429).  His  aversion  to  the  rule  of  a 
mob  (Agam.,  883  ;  Eumen.,  516, 699).  Athens  called  "  a  fortress  of  the 
Gods"  (Eumen.,  919 ;  cf .  St.  Paul  in  Acts).  His  Piety  (Pers.,  454,  497). 
The  Persians  sacrilegious  (Pers.  808).  It  is  well  here  to  append  more 
data  or  references  from  Apollodoros  amply  illustrating  jealousy,  fear, 
pride,  revenge,  of  the  Gods. 

Apollodoros  of  Athens  was  a  pupil  of  the  foremost  of  the  Alexan- 
drine literary  scholars  and  critics,  Aristarchos.  He  wrote  in  the 
second  century  before  Christ,  when  classical  production  was  at  an 
end.  Personally  he  was  a  Stoic,  and  in  twenty-four  books  presented 
his  allegorizing  view  of  the  origin  of  Myths.  The  little  "  Biblio- 
theca  "  may  be  an  extract  or  brief  reduction ;  it  is  simply  a  genealogical 
and  chronological  manual  of  data  palliating  nothing,  glorifying  noth- 
ing, but  leaving  that  to  the  absurd  and  mendacious  ecstasy  of  scholars 
of  the  Christian  era,  who  are  delving  for  their  "  pure  humanity." 
Even  if  the  little  manual  has  had  no  actual  relation  to  Apollodoros 
its  substantial  accuracy  no  one  can  deny ;  it  is  absolutely  free  from 
any  animus,  and  the  original  work,  of  which  it  is  a  compilation,  faith- 
fully recorded  the  variants  of  legends  and  the  individual  presentations 
as  they  are  found  in  the  chief  poets  or  mythological  writers,  "as 
Euripides  says,"  "  as  the  Tragedians  say,"  "  as  he  who  wrote  the 
Nostoi"  (i.e.  the  legends  of  the  return  of  the  various  heroes  from 


THE  ANGER  AND  ENVY  OF  THE  GODS    171 

Troy),  "as  some  say,"  "  as  Homer  says,"  "  as  Hesiod  says,"  "  as  Aku- 
silaos  says,"  "  as  Pherekydes  says,"  or  Telesilla,  Eumelos,  Philocrates, 
Panyasis.  The  following  data  then  are  recorded  in  the  little  manual, 
which  any  one  may  verify  for  himself  by  consulting  the  index  of  any 
of  the  current  editions  :  Hercher's  or  Westermann's.  Zeus  feared 
Hera  and  so  buried  Elare  underground,  who  had  conceived  Tityos 
from  him.  Apollon,  god  of  light  and  all  other  virtues,  flayed  alive 
Marsyas,  whom  he  had  defeated  in  a  contest  of  music.  HWa  flung 
Side  into  Hades  because  she  had  vied  with  her  as  to  beauty  of  form. 
Aphrodite  punished  Eos  with  undying  love  for  Orion,  because  E6s 
had  couched  with  Ares.  Artemis,  neglected  at  Kalydon,  caused  un- 
utterable woe  in  the  family  of  Meleagros.  Phineus  was  blinded  by 
the  gods  because  he  foretold  the  future  to  mankind.  Poseidon  dried 
up  Argos,  angry  at  Inachos,  because  the  latter  bore  witness  that  the 
land  belonged  to  Hera.  The  Nereids  caused  exposure  of  Andromeda, 
because  the  maiden's  mother  had  vied  with  them  as  to  beauty ;  Posei- 
don shares  in  their  anger.  Zeus  blinds  Asklepios,  because  he  fears 
that  human  kind  might  get  too  much  aid  against  death  and  disease. 
Poseidon,  angry  because  he  was  worsted  in  his  struggle  about  Athens, 
with  Athena,  floods  Attica.  Zeus  corrupted  lo,  who  was  then  priest- 
ess of  Hera  at  Argos,  —  revenge  of  Hera.  Zeus  forced  Kallisto  in 
disguise,  ravished  Aigina,  quarrels  with  Poseidon  about  possession  of 
Thetis.  Hera  persecutes  Herakles  through  life ;  causes  Dionysos  to 
be  insane.  Demeter  (a  contribution  of  the  pure  pastoral  humanity 
of  Arcadian  fancy)  became  mother  of  a  horse  through  Poseidon. 
Teiresias  was  blinded  by  the  gods,  because  he  told  human  kind  what 
the  gods  wished  to  conceal.  Poseidon,  from  anger,  caused  the  beast 
love  of  Pasiphse. 

This  was  the  hemp  of  which  Attic  tragedy  was  spun,  and  we  must 
not  marvel  that  great  talents  failed  to  endow  these  themes  with  more 
nobility  and  dignity  than  they  actually  did  :  the  wonderful  thing  was, 
that  they  sometimes  succeeded. 

We  are  here  reminded  of  a  saying  of  Samuel  Johnson  about  a 
dancing  dog  moving  on  his  hind  feet ;  it  would  not  be  fair  to  criticise 
the  performance,  it  was  quite  wonderful  that  he  could  do  it  at  all. 

Where,  indeed,  is  the  slightest  vestige  of  chivalry  or  of  tender  and 
self -sacrificing  demeanor  toward  the  other  sex?  Where,  indeed,  is 
the  slightest  vestige  of  romance  ?  And  where  all  tragic  situations  are 
determined  or  predetermined  by  an  inexorable  fate  and  by  sins  com- 
mitted by  others  —  where,  I  say,  is  that  real,  tragical  conflict  in  the 
breast  of  man  confronted  by  his  own  evil  will  alone,  and  tempted  by 
the  daimon  within  his  own  breast  ?  King  Arthur,  Macbeth,  Chriem- 
hild,  Roland,  the  political  figures  of  the  English  Wars  of  the  Roses, 
they  all  are,  as  heroic  subjects,  infinitely  more  fitted  to  afford  stuff 
for  tragedies  than  the  low  and  crude  themes  of  Hellenic  personifica- 
tion of  nature  forces,  in  the  garb  of  an  anthropomorphism  main- 
tained on  a  pitiable  level. 

Mahaffy  has  essayed  to  find  chivalrous  things  in  the  Homeric 
Epics  :  nothing  can  be  more  pointless  and  forced. 


172  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

And  as  to  the  heroic  legends  of  the  Greeks,  we  may  well  assert, 
against  Aristotle,  that  there  are  nobler  and  loftier  things  in  a  succes- 
sion of  human  experiences  than  felicity  and  infelicity  of  outward 
faring :  there  is  possible  a  greater  consummation  than  that. 

For  then  only  do  the  higher  and  highest  things  enter  human  life, 
when  a  transcendent  responsibility  grasps  and  holds  the  soul  of  man. 

Dante  thus  is  unspeakably  lofty  because  this  is  in  his  poem.  But 
where  there  is  nothing  in  any  catastrophe  but  the  absolute  cessation 
of  these  our  present  animal  and  social  functions,  then  the  clock  of 
being  indeed  has  lost  its  pendulum. 

It  will  serve  no  particular  purpose  to  cite  Grote,  or  Curtius,  or 
Wilamowitz,  or  this  one  or  that  one  —  but  I  conclude  this  part  of  my 
note  with  a  statement  in  Aristotle  ("  De  Arte  Poetica"  Chap.  13)  : 
"  Formerly  the  poets  told  the  familiar  tale  of  haphazard  legends,  but 
now  the  finest  tragedies  are  composed  as  dealing  with  a  small  number 
of  (princely)  houses,  such  as  Alkmaion,  CEdipus,  Orestes,  Meleagros, 
Thyestes,  and  Telephos"  —  a  practical  elimination  of  by  far  the  great- 
est portion  of  myth  tradition,  we  see.  Why  then  deliberate,  with 
some  eminent  modern  critics,  e.  g.  Wilamowitz,  on  that  infelicity 
which  produced  a  limited  standard  or  canon  of  best  plays?  How 
small  is  the  number  of  those  who  really  appropriate  the  extant 
plays  1 

In  connection  with  Herodotus,  the  reader  may  profitably  consult 
the  elaborate  monograph  by  Wecklein:  "  Ueber  die  Tradition  der 
Perserlcriege,"  Munich  Academy,  1876,  pp.  239-314.  Two  American 
scholars,  A.  V.  W.  Jackson,  of  Columbia  University,  and  Tolman,  of 
Vanderbilt,  have  dealt  much  with  the  trans-^Egean  data  furnished 
by  this  historian.  Herodotus  certainly  is  inferior  to  Thucydides  as  a 
historian,  but  he  mirrors  the  life  of  fairly  the  entire  range  of  the 
Mediterranean  world  of  480-430  B.C.,  with  a  universality  which  is  quite 
unique.  As  for  the  polygraphous  Mahaffy,  with  his  "  uncompromis- 
ing positivism  of  Thucydides,"  etc.,  he  employs  a  trick  of  clapping 
modern  categories  and  the  catch  phrase  of  yesterday  upon  thoughts, 
principles,  and  themes  very  remote.  What  is  gained  by  clothing  the 
son  of  Oloros  in  a  vestment  woven  by  Auguste  Comte  ?  It  is  a  fetch- 
ing trick,  and  much  resorted  to  by  many  other  writers,  especially  by 
Mommsen.  But  it  is  quite  unhistorical. 


CHAPTER   IX 

SOPHOCLES  OF  KOLONOS 

OF  this  famous  author,  composer  of  music,  and  accom- 
plished stage  director,  endowed,  too,  with  an  uncommonly 
handsome  person,  and  Athenian  patriot,  the  Munich 
scholar,  W.  Christ,  says  (in  his  "  Hist,  of  Greek  Litera- 
ture") the  following:  "To  the  sweet  gifts  of  Aphrodite 
he  was  in  no  wise  averse,  nor  does  he  seem  to  have  kept 
himself  free  from  the  perversion  of  Greek  antiquity,  the 
love  of  fair  boys."  Welcker,  Schoell,  and  others  try  to 
explain  away  other  stains  in  the  record.  This  pleading 
and  this  rubbing  out  of  spots  is  a  familiar  process:  but 
why  not  be  inexorably  exact  here  too  when  you  boast  of 
your  critical  akribeia?  (We  like  to  love  and  esteem 
that  which  forms  the  very  staple  of  our  pursuits,  I  know.) 
He  was  born  a  few  years  before  Marathon,  and  died  in 
405  B.C.,  not  long  before  that  Trafalgar  of  his  country's 
sea  power  and  empire  (Clinton's  date),  the  battle  of 
-3£gospotamos ;  so  brief  was  the  blossoming,  flowering, 
and  maturity  of  the  inter-Greek  power  of  that  famous 
commonwealth.  Pindar  wrote  and  composed  the  inci- 
dental music  long  after  the  birth  of  Sophocles,  Plato  was 
born  twenty-four  years  before  his  death.  A  life,  indeed, 
long,  and  of  unique  comprehension,  a  life,  one  may  fairly 
call  it  too,  of  the  Periclean  Age.  Now  even  Thorwaldsen 
and  Canova  have  not  equalled  Pheidias,  the  greatest  figure 
of  that  age.  Let  us  moderate  the  mandatory  ecstasy  pre- 
scribed by  the  hierophants  of  culture,  the  Goethes,  the 
Hermann  Grimms,  and  the  others.  For  while  we  have 
no  sonnets  of  Rafael,  no  Burchard's  diary,  no  Politian's 
Greek  verse,  to  unveil  the  real  morality  of  the  Periclean 
Age  (as  these  did  of  the  much  vaunted  era  of  Lorenzo 
and  his  son,  Leo  X),  still  we  have  not  a  little  of  evidence 

173 


174  TESTIMOXIUM  ANIALE 

for  assuming  that  there  was  the  slightest  extra-sesthetical 
upward  movement  in  that  same  Periclean  Age.  Of  it 
Plutarch  writes  with  a  fervor  quite  natural  in  the  idealiz- 
ing pursuit  of  this  ancient  classicist  (Plut.,  "Pericles,"  c. 
13) :  "  As  the  works  were  going  up,  works  surpassing  in 
material  greatness,  and  inimitable  in  form  and  grace,  and  as 
the  craftsmen  were  vying  with  one  another  to  surpass  the 
workmanship  by  the  artistic  beauty,  the  most  marvellous 
thing  was  the  rapidity  of  execution.  For  those  works, 
each  of  which  they  thought  would  barely  reach  comple- 
tion in  many  successions  and  generations  of  men,  these 
all  received  their  consummation  in  the  zenith  of  a  single 
political  administration.  .  .  .  For  the  dexterity  and 
speed  in  production  do  not  endow  a  work  with  enduring 
importance  nor  with  the  precision  requisite  for  beauty: 
but  the  time  which  like  a  capital  fund  has  been  invested 
in  advance,  in  the  toil  devoted  to  production,  that  time 
repays  in  bestowing  strength,  in  the  imperishable  endurance 
of  that  which  has  been  created.  Hence  even  greater  is 
the  admiration  bestowed  upon  the  works  of  Pericles,  inas- 
much as  they  were  produced  in  a  brief  period  of  time  and 
still  facing  the  plenitude  of  time.  For  in  beauty  each 
one  (of  the  works)  immediately  then  was  classical  (an- 
tique), but  in  the  consummate  flower  of  achievement  it 
is  to  this  day  (say  from  440  B.C.  to  100  A.D.)  fresh  and 
newly  wrought:  so  there  blooms  on  these  creations  a 
certain  novelty  preserving  that  which  our  eyes  seize  as 
something  that  time  cannot  touch,  as  though  the  works 
possessed  an  ever  vernal  breath  and  an  unaging  soul " 
(interfused  with  their  material  substance).  Something 
of  this  is  still  exhaled  from  the  Elgin  marbles  and  other 
notable  remnants,  although  everywhere  in  the  world  the 
boast  of  possession  and  the  unstinted  generosity  of  acquisi- 
tion is  not  in  proportion  to  the  end  sought.  The  refining 
influence  of  art  on  men  at  large  remains  pitiably  small. 
Taste  is  in  the  main  the  very  last  fruit  of  culture,  but 
a  fruit  which  many  frosts  often  prevent  from  reaching 
maturity.  Hence  excavation  and  torsi  and  such  additions 
to  the  present  assets  are  not  significant  and  important  — 


SOPHOCLES  OF  KOLONOS  175 

nor  is  there  to  be  found  anywhere  among  men  any  refine- 
ment of  the  sense  of  beauty  attained  and  achieved  without 
severe  labor.  It  remains  the  concern  of  an  £lite,  a  chosen 
body  often  much  permeated  with  vanity  and  culture 
pride. 

Of  this  Periclean  Age  and  its  perfection  in  sculpture, 
Ernst  Curtius  once  upon  a  time  wrote  these  words,  a  typi- 
cal dithyramb  of  the  archaeologist's  ecstasies  (  "  Hist,  of 
Greece,"  Vol.  2) :  "  The  art  of  endowing  marble  with  a 
soul,  in  the  school  of  Pheidias,  has  been  brought  to  the 
uttermost  perfection  attainable  for  man.  One  still  feels 
the  severity  of  drawing  peculiar  to  the  older  school  and 
the  incisive  articulation,  but  the  hardness  and  the  stiff 
symmetry  have  been  overcome;  in  graceful  abandon  the 
figures  lie  and  sit  near  one  another:  one  feels  the  breathing 
process  which  moves  the  limbs,  and  realizes  in  the  shapes 
of  surpassing  fairness  which  fill  the  something  of  the  bliss- 
ful life  of  the  Olympian  gods."  Particularly  in  the  rare 
pauses  when  Hera  was  not  embittered  against  her  incon- 
tinent and  ever  faithless  spouse.  But  to  return  to  Sopho- 
cles, who  in  his  own  sphere  was  one  of  the  brightest  stars 
in  that  Periclean  firmament. 

From  his  fragments  I  transcribe  a  few  pertinent  items 
mostly  owed  to  the  anthology  of  Stobseus,  from  Ajax  the 
Lokrian:  "Man  is  but  passing  breath  and  shadow  only." 
And  with  exquisitely  moulded  phrase  (Fragm.  146,  Nauck) 
he  speaks  of  Life's  brief  Isthmos,  a  brief  isthmus  indeed 
between  the  two  oceans  of  the  eternity  of  time  past  and 
future,  —  a  cry  of  the  soul  familiar  to  all  who  refuse  to  be 
content  with  mere  matter.  "  Cutlets  from  the  feast  of 
Homer," — from  that  veritable  barbecue,  —  we  remember 
that  jEschylean  phrase  of  confession.  The  phrase  is  lack- 
ing in  the  slender  tradition  concerning  Sophocles,  but,  if 
anything,  the  Trojan  cycle  dominated  here  even  more. 

Achilles  on  Skyros,  the  Lovers  of  Achilles,  Captive 
Women  of  Troy,  Paris  or  Alexander,  Andromache,  the 
Gathering  of  the  Achseans,  the  Men  of  Antenor  (who 
fled  from  Troy),  Helen,  Hermione  (daughter  of  Menelaos), 
Iphigeneia,  Laokoon,  Nausikaa,  and  so  on.  We  see  how 


176  TESTIMOXIUM 

time  deepened  the  hold  of  these  legends,  in  art,  in  educa- 
tion, in  everything.  And  we  shall  see  that  Sophocles  does 
not  essentially  rise  above  the  Homeric  level.  Nay,  does 
he  not  fall  below  it,  when  he  composes  a  play  entitled 
"  The  Lovers  of  Achilles  "  ?  And  Ovid  too,  who  more 
than  any  ancient  versifier  has  attempted  to  turn  impurity 
into  belles-lettres,  even  he  could  cite  this  play  in  extenua- 
tion of  his  own  writings :  and  still  Sophocles  was  not  so 
morally  obtuse  as  not  to  feel  profoundly  the  evil  as  an 
evil  —  he  calls  it  a  disease,  an  evil  (Fragm.  154,  Nauck)  — 
an  evil  comparable  to  children  handling  a  piece  of  ice  in 
winter :  they  will  not  hold  it,  or  rather  they  would  not,  — 
nor  would  they  drop  it.  And  it  seems  the  fair  sons  of 
Niobe  were  a  theme  similarly  dragged  into  the  dust. 

The  old  problem  (the  theme  of  the  book  of  Job)  recurs 
here  too:  "  The  Beings  above  should  not  so  deal  with 
mortals:  those  who  are  pious  should  have  some  conspicu- 
ous profit  from  the  gods,  and  the  unrighteous  should  pay 
the  penalty  opposed  to  these,  a  penalty  avenging  their 
evil  deeds"  (Stobseus,  106,  11).  To  be  content  with  lim- 
ited blessings:  "neither  married  life,  my  maiden  friends, 
nor  wealth  exceeding  measure,  would  I  wish  to  have  at 
home;  for  these  are  the  paths  of  envy"  (Stob.,  38,  26). 
In  matters  of  worship,  it  seems,  there  is  no  desire  at  any 
point  to  break  away  from  ancestral  usage:  the  Homeric 
level  seems  to  be  everywhere  maintained.  So  we  learn, 
incidentally  (fr.  411,  N.),  that  the  Trojan  gods  carried 
"  their  own  idols  "  on  their  shoulders  away  from  Ilion, "  know- 
ing that  its  capture  is  transpiring." 

The  recognition  of  man's  limitations,  qua  man:  the 
essential  element  of  what  the  Greeks  called  sophrosyne: 
it  is  the  very  atmosphere  of  their  morality :  loose  writers 
have  striven  to  take  over  the  curiously  delicate  sense  of 
symmetry  possessed  by  the  Greeks  and  conceive  it  as  in- 
terfused and  blended  with  their  morality  and  religion  — 
it  is  a  conceit  of  remote  admiration.  For  the  self- 
abandonment  to  the  lowest  appetites,  the  worship  of 
Dionysos,  the  very  sovereignty  of  Kypris  among  the 
Olympians,  the  Satyr,  the  goat-man,  and  many  of  the  ex- 


SOPHOCLES  OF  KOLONOS  177 

tremely  animal  joys  bound  up  with  the  grape  and  all  its 
works  —  where  is  your  symmetry,  where  is  your  Doric 
peristyle,  or  where  the  exquisite  symbolism  of  your  draped 
Muses?  But  we  must  pass  from  these  crumbs  of  the 
fragments  to  something  more  tangible  and  substantial 
presented  by  the  plays  actually  preserved. 

The  "  Ajax "  presents  a  legend  whose  main  features 
were  given,  and  really  had  become  immobile.  A  hero 
maddened  by  wounded  pride,  then  recovering  his  sanity, 
determines  not  to  survive  his  disgrace  and  so  destroys 
himself.  Observe  that,  exactly  as  in  the  Epic,  Athena  is 
the  specific  guardian  of  the  adroit  and  never  puzzled 
Odysseus:  "'tis  her  hand  that  pilots  him:"  it  was  she 
who  drove  him  into  his  misery,  it  was  she  who  had  made 
Ajax  believe  that  she  was  his  ally.  That  Greek  or  Attic 
figment  is,  as  in  Homer,  chiefly  astuteness  personified,  dei- 
fied, if  you  like  :  our  moral  sense  revolts  at  the  role  which 
she  plays  in  the  drama,  owl-eyed  or  otherwise. 

Ajax  really  had  slain  but  sheep,  in  the  belief  that  he 
had  avenged  his  wounded  pride  on  the  Peloponnesian 
brother  chiefs,  and  still  he  pretended  to  withdraw  by 
himself  to  the  meadows  by  the  sea,  to  purify  himself  by 
ablutions,  and  guard  himself  against  the  heavy  wrath  of 
the  goddess,  to  gain  a  reconciliation.  But,  frankly  speak- 
ing, his  fault  is  not  that  he  sinned,  but  his  sin  is  this  that 
he  has  to  bear  the  antagonism  of  an  Olympian  Force,  that 
he  came  into  collision,  he  the  champion  of  physical 
courage,  with  the  goddess  of  astuteness  who  had  quite 
another  pet.  The  drifting  pot  of  burnt  clay  collides  with 
the  granite  cliff.  True,  Ajax  once  appeared  so  haughty 
that  he  defies  the  gods,  so  impious  as  to  disdain  military 
glory,  unless  achieved  by  himself  alone.  "  For  bodies  that 
exceed  their  proper  measure,  troublous  hulks,  did  fall  in 
misfortune  sent  by  the  gods  —  so  said  the  seer  —  of  such 
who  while  begotten  of  the  human  kind,  then  nourish  a 
spirit  not  in  harmony  with  mere  man."  His  father 
Telamon,  when  Ajax  departed  from  Salamis  for  the  war, 
wished  him  success  in  war,  "  but  ever  to  prevail  with  God 
his  ally."  But  he  replied:  "My  father,  one  who  has  the 


178  TESTIMONIUM  ANB1JE 

gods  with  him,  even  though  he  be  nothing,  could  gain 
puissance :  but  even  without  them  do  I  trust  that  I  will 
snatch  this  fame"  (v.758  sqq.").  It  is  precisely  the  same 
spirit  which  is  in  Herodotus,  contemporary  and  spiritual 
congener  of  the  dramatist.  A  Theodicee,  or  justification 
of  the  ways  of  gods  with  men.  The  bitterness  of  the 
Athenian  against  Sparta  is  everywhere  revealed:  Ajax 
falls,  but  the  hero  of  Salamis  is,  for  all  that,  an  Attic 
heroa,  and  one  of  the  worthies  (Paus.,  1,  5,  2)  after  whom 
were  named  the  ten  Tribes  of  Attica.  In  passing  we  should 
not  forget  how  it  always  grated  on  the  moral  sense  of 
Greece,  that  for  one  fair  and  faithless  woman  so  much  woe 
and  misery  was  enacted  in  the  world  of  Greece  (v,  1111). 
Not  less  than  six  plays  in  Greek  Comedy  dealt  with 
Helen  and  her  lovers. 

Bitterness  is  not  to  be  carried  on  and  maintained  beyond 
death  :  the  corpse  of  the  hero  is  to  have  honorable  burial 
—  (theme  of  "Antigone")  —  and  the  insatiable  vindic- 
tiveness  of  the  Peloponnesian  kings  is  humbled  and 
defied,  these  are  the  laws  of  the  gods  (1343).  How 
are  the  mighty  fallen ! 


In  the  matricidal  revenge  taken  by  Electra  and  her 
brother  Orestes  on  their  mother  Klytaimnestra,  we  have 
little  to  observe  for  our  present  volume  and  purpose. 
Revenge  and  Requital  go  on  :  the  royal  children  in  a 
way  are  but  puppets  in  the  active  fulfilment  of  the 
curses  of  the  past ;  and  noteworthy  is  the  art  of  Sophocles 
here  :  for  even  thus  he  achieves  it,  that  definite  and 
thoroughly  well-drawn  personalities  do  pass  before  us. 
But  while  the  sorrows  of  the  Pelopidae  have  not  yet  an 
end  —  the  Erinyans  are  still  to  harrow  the  soul  of  Orestes 
—  let  us  turn  to  one  definite  matter  to  further  our  quest. 

It  is  prayer,  prayer  by  all  who  do  or  suffer  here. 
Klytaimnestra  has  been  troubled  by  dreams  and  prays 
to  Apollo  for  solution  (644)  :  "  For  visions  which  I  did 
behold  this  night  of  double  dream,  these,  O  Lord  Lykeios, 
if  they  foreshadow  good,  grant  them  fulfilment;  but  if 


SOPHOCLES  OF  KOLONOS  179 

inimical,  then  upon  my  enemies  let  them  fall,  and  do 
not,  if  by  stratagems  there  be  who  plot  to  cast  me  from 
my  present  wealth,  permit  it,  but  that  I  always  thus  ex- 
isting knowing  naught  of  harm  the  palace  of  the  Atrides 
and  this  sceptre  shall  maintain,  companion  of  friends  with 
whom  I  now  reside,  enjoying  fair  days  even  at  the  hands 
of  those  of  my  children  from  whom  no  ill-will  touches 
me  or  bitter  grief.  These  things,  wolf -warder  Apollon, 
graciously  hear  and  grant  to  all  of  us  just  as  we  pray. 
And  all  the  other  things,  though  I  be  silent,  I  think  it 
right  that  thou  that  art  divine  shouldst  fully  know."  No 
moral  justification  here,  for  this  invocation. 

Conversely  the  last  heir  of  Pelops  and  young  avenger 
of  his  father's  shades  enters  the  scene  of  his  coming  deed 
with  a  prayer  (v.  65)  :  "  But,  O  paternal  land  and  local 
gods,  receive  me  faring  well  in  these  your  streets,  and  thou 
paternal  home  :  for  I  do  come  thy  cleanser  in  justice, 
propelled  by  the  gods."  His  sister  invokes  her  father, 
on  whose  tomb  she  pours  the  proper  libations,  and  then 
addresses  herself  to  the  powers  below  (110)  :  "  O  house 
of  Hades  and  Persephone,  O  Hermes  of  the  soil  below, 
and  puissant  Curse,  ye  venerable  offsprings  of  the  gods, 
Erinyans,  who  see  the  shedding  of  innocent  blood,  come 
ye,  aid  ye,  avenge  our  father's  murder." 

When  at  last  Orestes  and  Pylades  have  entered  the  palace 
to  work  vengeance,  the  prayer  of  Elektra  pursues  them  to 
their  deed  (1376)  :  "  O  Lord  Apollo,  graciously  hear  the 
twain,  and  me,  with  them,  who  often  did  present  myself 
before,  with  my  hand  generously  filled  from  what  I  had ; 
but  now,  wolf- warder  Apollo,  from  such  (gifts)  as  I  have, 
I  ask,  I  do  fall  at  thy  feet,  I  pray,  be  a  propitious  helper 
in  these  our  designs,  and  show  to  mankind  what  kind  of 
reward  the  gods  bestow  upon  impiety."  "  Hermes  (1395) 
leads  the  youthful  pair,  concealing  in  darkness  their  design 
to  the  very  goal  of  execution,  and  tarrieth  no  more." 


CEdipus,  prince  of  Thebes,  is   a  psychological  master- 
piece as  gradually  he  learns  the  terrible  truth,  remotely 


180  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

indicated  by  the  Seer  Teiresias  :  "  Thou  art  the  man  "  — 
thy  father's  slayer  and  thy  mother's  husband  —  first 
saviour  of  the  land,  and  ruler,  then  self-blinded  and 
self-curst,  an  outcast  from  the  company  of  human  kind  : 
while  unrevealed  to  his  land  and  to  himself  he  was  the 
cause  of  plague,  the  very  curse,  the  stain  of  Thebes. 

After  all,  the  gods  in  this  famous  play  are  the  Homeric 
gods.  That  fateful  babe,  once  exposed  on  Kithairon  — 
who  was  its  sire  ?  a  nymph,  perhaps,  bore  it,  some  one  of 
the  long-lived  nymphs  having  couched  with  Pan  who 
treads  the  mountains  ?  or  art  thou  an  offspring  of  Loxias, 
who  is  fond  of  all  the  spaces  of  the  pasture  land  ?  or  be 
it  he  who  rules  over  Kyllene,  or  the  god  of  grapes  who 
sojourns  on  the  tops  of  mountains  received  thee  as  a  find 
from  the  nymphs  of  Helikon,  with  whom  he  sports  so 
much? 

To  us,  I  say,  the  fate  of  (Edipus  is  intolerable  :  quiet 
and  happiness :  it  is  all  fate  and  fated.  The  fearful  curse 
which  the  sovereign  prince  himself  utters  earlier  in  the 
play,  it  is  impressive  and  makes  one  fairly  shudder : 
"  This  man  (236)  I  do  forbid,  whoever  he  may  be,  that 
no  one  in  this  land,  of  which  I  hold  the  sovereign  throne, 
may  shelter  under  roof,  nor  him  accost,  nor  have  him 
share  in  prayer  to  the  Gods,  or  sacrifice,  nor  give  him 
water  for  his  hands,  but  all  shall  thrust  him  from  their 
homes,  because  he  is  a  stain  for  us,"  etc.,  the  entire  land 
is  uncleansed  (256)  until  the  evil-doer  be  discovered:  a 
curse  upon  the  fields,  and  barren  wombs  for  wives  of 
those  who  remain  aloof  from  quest  for  guilty  one.  And 
when  finally  the  woe  unutterable  has  lowered  around  the 
head  of  the  prince  himself,  then  indeed  neither  Danube 
nor  the  Phasis  can  wash  with  purification  this  roof  (1227), 
all  that  it  doth  conceal.  .  .  .  The  wretched  prince  fared 
as  he  fared,  from  babehood  to  the  throne,  —  why  ?  —  be- 
cause he  was  hated  of  the  gods.  But  why  ?  The  Greek 
legends  had  no  answer  here.  For  (Edipus  had  ever 
trembled  lest  he  injure  Poly  bos  of  Corinth,  his  reputed 
father.  The  misery  of  the  self-blinded  wanderer  :  to  take 
his  own  life,  'twere  a  quick  release  :  but  how,  in  Hades 


SOPHOCLES  OF  KOLONOS  181 

(1372),  could  he  bear  to  see  his  sire,  his  mother  too,  — 
with  whom  his  consciousness  was  connected  by  deeds 
more  potent  than  the  noose?  The  end  is  simply  misery 
unutterable — the  chorus  feels  the  fall  from  fortune's  peak 
to  this  abyss  and  gives  vent  to  one  of  those  noble  strains 
of  Sophocles  which  may  be  called  the  commonplaces  of 
disconsolate  humanity  (1186) :  "  O  generations  of  men, 
how  do  I  rate  you  like  unto  nothing,  when  you  have 
lived.  For  who,  what  man,  bears  greater  share  of 
happiness,  than  so  much  only  as  but  to  seem,  and  hav- 
ing seemed,  to  decline  ?  "  Like  a  dirge  or  funeral  march 
resounds  the  incisive  recessional  of  the  chorus  as  it  de- 
parts from  the  orchestra:  "Ye  who  dwell  in  Thebes 
ancestral,  do  behold  CEdipus  here,  who  did  know  the 
famous  riddles,  was  a  most  puissant  man,  into  flood  how 
great  of  awful  misfortune  has  he  come!  Hence  we  that 
are  mortal  should  fix  our  attention  on  beholding  that 
final  day  and  so  call  no  one  happy  before  he  has 
traversed  the  goal  of  life  without  having  suffered  any 
sorrow."  Solon  and  Kroisos  again,  we  see.  Sophocles 
himself  was  not  satisfied  with  a  disposition  of  the  legend 
which  furnished  by  no  means  any  moral  solution  or  any 
satisfaction  to  the  human  sense  of  guilt  and  justice.  But 
to  this  we  shall  revert  in  dealing  with  the  last  of  his  plays. 

"  Antigone  "  is  of  the  same  Theban  cycle  of  royal  le- 
gend —  you  might  here  too  say :  The  sorrows  of  the  Lab- 
dakidai  have  not  yet  an  end. 

The  bold  and  noble  soul  of  the  royal  maid  who 
defies  bridal  felicity  and  life  itself,  rather  than  leave  un- 
buried  the  corpse  of  her  brother  fallen  in  fratricidal  duel, 
victim  of  a  father's  curse  —  rather,  I  say,  than  have  dogs 
and  vultures  despoil  these  remains.  Woe  and  Felicity  — 
it  is  all  a  matter  of  grim  fate  —  it  depends  on  the  daimon: 
"  some  god  "  is  pursuing  the  princely  house  of  Labdakos 
(596),  ruining  it. 

The  stern  statute  of  King  Kreon,  and  the  higher  law: 
that  vengeance  and  retribution  of  human  institutions 
should  not  pass  beyond  death.  A  gloomy  firmament  is 
vaulted  above  human  concerns;  and  the  divine  power 


182  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

and  rule  is  feared,  in  the  main:  generally  it  is  fearful 
whenever  it  reveals  itself  to  pigmy  man:  it  is  the  Puny 
as  over  against  the  Strong,  the  irresponsibly  Mighty. 
Fear,  I  say,  and  Dread  are  the  chief  elements  of  this  re- 
ligion. And  so  the  chorus  voices  it  (582  sqq.^):  "Happy 
they  whose  span  of  life  knows  not  the  taste  of  troubles. 
For  those  whose  house  is  shaken  from  God,  no  part  of  woe 
is  spared  but  it  will  stealthily  find  its  way  to  the  fulness  of 
the  generation:  as  when  the  flood  of  briny  deep  rolls  from 
the  bottom  dark  sand,  when  the  gloom  of  the  nether  sea 
comes  charging  on  with  fiercely  whistling  blasts  from 
Thracian  north,  and  the  stricken  coasts  sorely  lashed  by 
gales  utter  groaning  roar.  So  too  I  behold  the  ancient 
sorrows  of  the  families  now  perished  from  Labdakos  fall- 
ing upon  sorrows,  nor  does  generation  furnish  requital  to 
generation  but  some  god  hurls  them  to  the  ground:  nor 
has  it  any  deliverance."  Whereas  Zeus  is  to  be  feared — 
why?  because  he  endureth:  "As  for  thy  power,  O  Zeus, 
which  of  men  can  restrain  in  transgression,  —  that  power 
which  neither  all-aging  sleep  captures  ever,  nor  the  un- 
tiring months  of  the  gods,  but  ruler  thou  in  unaging  time 
thou  boldest  fast  the  shimmering  gleam  of  Olympos  "(604). 
It  is  that  vault  above  us  and  all  its  works,  under  which 
and  amid  which  we  live  our  little  lives.  And  Earth  is 
the  correlative — "the  highest  of  the  Gods"  (337);  "and 
replenish  the  earth  and  subdue  it"  we  read  in  Genesis  1, 
28;  but  as  in  the  Prometheus  tale  of  Hesiod,  so  here  in 
"  Antigone,"  335  sqq.,  all  human  civilization  and  conquest 
of  the  earth  is  still  conceived  as  a  defiance  and  a  bold 
invasion  on  the  part  of  man;  and  even  though  he  tame 
and  subdue  all  creatures  to  his  use  and  profit  ever  so 
much,  though  he  has  devised  speech,  and  his  conceits  ride 
on  the  wings  of  the  wind,  though  he  has  acquired  the 
instinct  for  civil  institutions,  and  his  substantial  domicile 
cares  naught  for  hoar-frost  or  pelting  rain  showers,  though 
in  short  he  be  "  all-devising  "  (360) :  though  resourceless 
he  approaches  nothing  of  the  future,  of  Hades  only  he 
will  never  devise  an  escape.  (Sophocles  wrote  this  play 
at  fifty-five.) 


SOPHOCLES  OF  KOLONOS  183 

Antigone  herself  avows  the  higher,  the  unwritten  law, 
in  words  of  surpassing  dignity  and  beauty,  replying  to 
the  angry  reproof  of  the  Theban  prince  (450) :  (I  dared 
to  do  it)  "  For  it  was  not  Zeus  at  all  who  proclaimed  this 
to  me,  nor  Justice,  she  who  has  her  domicile  with  the 
nether  gods,  she  did  not  fix  statutes  such  as  these  'mong 
human  kind,  nor  did  I  wean  that  so  strong  were  thy  proc- 
lamations, that  mortal  as  thou  art  thou  couldst  outrun 
the  unwritten  and  untottering  statutes  of  the  gods.  For 
not  to-day  or  yesterday,  but  from  all  time  these  (verities) 
do  live,  and  no  one  knows  since  when  they  did  appear." 
The  real  tragic  figure  is  the  king  and  father  himself,  so 
haughty  and  so  sure  of  himself  and  so  utterly  prostrate 
and  discomfited  in  the  end.  It  is  again  the  spirit  of 
^Eschylus  and  Herodotus  which  everywhere  prevails. 
The  overweaning  and  self-pleasing  temperament  of  Kreon 
is  in  itself  a  negation  of  man's  impotence  and  dependency; 
early  in  the  play  the  chorus  utters  the  Leitmotiv  (127)  : 
"  For  Zeus  exceedingly  hates  the  boastings  of  a  great 
tongue." 

Sophocles  actually  rises  in  this  play  above  the  narrow 
limits  of  local  piety  and  what  we  may  call  the  institutional 
religion  of  the  Greek  communities.  For  it  is  this  very  thing 
of  which  Kreon  is  the  stanch  defender,  it  is  this  very 
thing  which  must  yield  to  the  higher,  to  the  unwritten  law. 
"  Thou  utterest  intolerable  things  (282)  in  saying  that 
the  gods  have  any  forethought  for  this  corpse.  Would 
they  bury  him,  honoring  him  preeminently  as  a  benefactor, 
him,  who  came  to  set  on  fire  their  pillared  fanes  and  con- 
secrated gifts,  their  land  and  laws  ?  "  —  a  very  significant 
passage. 

The  "  Trachinian  "Women  "  exhibits  the  destruction  of 
a  heros,  of  Hercules.  The  loneliness  of  his  forsaken  spouse, 
Deianira,  is  touching;  of  stuff  so  crude  to  build  a  noble 
play,  none  but  a  master  hand  could  have  achieved  it. 
The  hand  that  drew  the  character  of  the  forsaken  Deian- 
ira has  deserved  well  of  women  everywhere,  and  for  all 
human  civilization,  the  more  so  as  the  matron's  place  was 


184  TESTIMONIUM  AXI1VLE 

mean  and  obscure  in  the  time  of  Aspasia.  Kypris  works 
all  the  misery  with  which  this  play  is  replete,  and  as  for 
marriage,  the  purely  zoological  or  political  aspect  thereof 
is  not  particularly  varied  in  this  play.  It  is  very  diffi- 
cult to  maintain  a  heroic  view  of  Hercules,  driven 
by  mere  lust,  namely,  by  his  desire  for  lole,  to  destroy 
Oichalia  and  cause  vast  misery  to  the  innocent  (354). 
The  frank  view  of  the  Greek  is  that  submission  (441  «<?<?.) 
to  the  sexual  impulse  is  the  only  proper  attitude :  "  Who- 
ever takes  his  stand  to  face  Eros,  as  boxer  will  for  hand- 
to-hand  encounter,  is  unwise.  For  Eros  rules  even  over 
the  gods  as  he  willeth,  and  me  too,"  etc.  Kypris  rules 
over  all,  "  how  she  deceived  the  son  of  Kronos  I  say  not, 
nor  the  dweller  in  night  Hades,  or  Poseidon  the  shaker  of 
the  Earth"  (500  *<?<?.)•  ^he  WOI>st  thing  in  the  play  is 
this,  that  Heracles  in  passing  from  earth  transmits  the 
poor  girl  lole  to  his  own  son  lolaos,  to  be  his  wedded 
wife.  The  youth  very  properly  stands  aghast  at  this  sug- 
gestion :  he  would  rather  perish,  but  submits  finally  to 
the  fear  of  the  paternal  curse.  It  is  a  mere  segment  of 
the  legend  and  lacks  all  true  consummation  and  moral 
solution.  He  who  suffered  retribution  is  a  saviour  of  Greek 
mankind,  such  as  they  conceived  him,  but  in  the  main  a 
being  of  brutal  self-indulgence  in  the  pauses  which  inter- 
vened between  his  various  labors,  canonic  and  other. 
The  current  moral  ideas  of  Sophocles  are  encountered 
again:  "An  ancient  saying  is  it  of  the  human  kind,  that 
you  cannot  fully  learn  the  lesson  of  a  life  of  mortal  men, 
before  one  dies,  nor  whether  a  man's  span  of  existence  be 
wholesome  for  him,  or  evil."  Always  the  same.  Pros- 
perity and  outward  fortune  being  the  standard  of  all  — 
so  that  Herodotus  himself,  if  anything,  is  a  little  deeper 
than  this  surface. 


The  central  figure  in  the  Philoktetes  (Trojan  cycle)  is 
young  Neoptolemos,  son  of  Achilles,  who  is  to  gain  from 
the  forsaken  archer  the  latter's  mighty  bow,  once  that  of 
Hercules,  and  bring  it  himself  to  the  Greek  camp  before 


SOPHOCLES  OF  KOLONOS  185 

Troy.  The  young  hero  is  swayed  by  inherited  nobility 
and  frankness.  A  foil  to  this  is  the  cunning  and  policy 
of  the  scheming  Odysseus.  Happiness  and  suffering  some- 
how are  bestowed  by  a  fate  inscrutable  in  the  main  :  even 
where  fate  and  gods  are  brought  together  in  a  deliberate 
concatenation  of  phrase,  as  in  1466,  when  the  long-suffer- 
ing archer,  a  curious  combination  of  Job  and  hermit,  takes 
leave  of  the  island  in  which  for  ten  years  he  led  a  preca- 
rious and  wretched  existence,  he  utters  the  closing  words  : 
"  Farewell,  O  soil  of  Lemnos  circled  by  the  salt  sea,  and 
send  me  in  good  passage  blamelessly  where  great  Moira 
conveys  me  .  .  .  and  the  all-subduing  deity  who  decreed 
these  things,  " — Homer  again. 


The  "  (Edipus  at  Kolonos  "  in  every  way,  may  I  say, 
is  the  requiem  of  the  old  master.  And  still  it  is  not  all 
Euthanasia.  The  royal  wanderer,  albeit  beggar  too,  once 
prince  of  Thebes,  has  come  to  the  spot  where  the  curse 
shall  be  taken  from  him  and  where  he  shall  enter  into  rest. 
Perhaps  there  is  a  little  of  King  Lear  here  too :  I  mean 
of  the  royal  father's  curse  against  his  own  offspring, 
"  that  she  may  feel  how  sharper  than  a  serpent's  tooth  it 
is  to  have  a  thankless  child  ! "  It  is  very  probable  that 
Sophocles  was  nearly  ninety  or  thereabouts  when  he  com- 
posed this  play.  Kolonos  was  his  native  demos.  In  the 
first  place  the  old  men  there  refuse  to  yield  up  the  vener- 
able wanderer  to  Kreon  of  Thebes.  Sophocles  himself, 
with  that  coloring  of  subdialectical  exposition  so  native 
and  intrinsic  in  Attic  speech  —  Sophocles  himself  puts 
into  the  mouth  of  the  blind  royal  beggar  a  stout  moral 
defence,  the  Attic  poet  gives  to  the  Thebaii  legend  and 
the  blind  strokes  of  its  inscrutable  Fate  an  ending,  an 
Attic  end,  may  I  say  (265)  :  "  for  not  my  body  was  my 
own  nor  were  my  deeds ;  for  my  deeds  are  more  of  the 
suffering  than  of  the  doing  kind  :  .  .  .  And  still  how  am 
I  evil  in  my  nature,  who,  when  I  suffered,  wrought  in 
requital  ?"  In  short,  Sophocles  asserts  with  simplicity  but 
as  a  moral  postulate  that  sin  must  be  associated  with  con- 


186  TESTIMOXIUM  ANBLE 

sciousness  and  deliberation  —  that  a  higher  moral  law 
(Athens  even  had  an  Altar  of  Pity)  must  shelter  him 
who  was  more  sinned  against  than  sinning.  Also,  the 
justice  of  the  gods  is  essential  justice  in  the  course  of 
time.  "You  men  of  Athens  honor  the  gods,  therefore 
be  convinced  that  the  gods  regard  the  pious  man,  and 
that  they  also  regard  the  non-reverential  men,  and  that 
never  yet  the  wicked  made  good  his  escape"  (381). 

Theseus  (the  Washington  of  Attic  political  veneration) 
appears  as  clothed  in  that  modesty  of  sdphrosynd:  fitted 
with  a  sympathy  derived  from  much  wandering  in  his  own 
life  he  goes  on  to  say  (566)  :  "For  I  know  I  am  a  man, 
no  more,  and  of  to-morrow's  day  I  have  no  greater  share 
than  thou."  Omitting  the  bitter  political  feeling,  nay, 
very  rancor  towards  the  neighboring  commonwealth  of 
Thebes,  I  note  the  following.  Trust  not  the  present  state 
of  any  merely  human  commonwealth:  "  Beloved  son  (607) 
of  Aigeus,  none  but  the  gods  receive  this  gift  of  honor 
that  they  live  for  evermore :  for  all  the  rest,  all-powerful 
Time  confounds  it.  There  perishes  the  strength  of  soil, 
of  body  too  it  perishes.  ..." 

The  old  age  of  our  dramatist  had  fallen  on  evil  times, 
when  on  the  continent  Athens  was  fairly  isolated,  when 
her  sea  power  too  was  rapidly  crumbling  away,  and  when 
even  nearer  to  himself  there  were  of  his  own  offspring 
those  who  would  have  him  declared  incompetent  from 
senile  decay.  Everything  in  the  play  is  in  harmony  with 
this  tradition.  If  the  bitterness  of  hatred  for  Thebes 
wrought  up  this  aging  soul,  why  should  not  the  senti- 
ment of  fatherly  affection  grossly  outraged  have  crept 
into  his  lines  ?  GEdipus  has  just  received  kindly  shelter 
from  the  old  men  of  Kolonos,  from  the  very  king  of 
Attica,  but  he  is  like  adamant  in  refusing  to  take  the 
curse  from  his  own  son :  of  Mercy  there  is  nothing  in  his 
breast,  nay,  he  damns  him  afresh  to  the  very  depths  of 
Tartarus  and  calls  upon  the  dire  Goddesses  of  requital 
to  hear  these  awful  words. 

The  poet  here  turned  with  tender  affection  to  his  native 
deme  :  Kolonos  was  holy  ground  also,  because  it  was  con- 


SOPHOCLES  OF  KOLONOS  187 

secrated  to  those  very  Goddesses  of  the  heavily  burdened 
conscience  and  inexorable  requital,  the  Erinyans.  And 
here  the  purifications  of  the  unfortunate  come  in :  they 
are  an  essential  part  of  the  play.  Attica  purifies  and  fur- 
nishes a  departure  in  peace  to  the  Theban  prince,  who  has 
been  cast  forth  by  his  own  polis,  his  own  community. 
There  is  a  moral  and  a  religious  earnestness  about  these 
rites  and  this  ritual  which  is  significant :  everywhere  the 
symbolism  is  easily  understood.  Jars  of  water  from  ever 
flowing  spring  (not  stagnant  pool),  carried  by  pious 
hands  (469  «<?.),  their  tops  and  handles  wrapped  in  freshly 
shorn  lamb's  wool.  From  these  the  water  must  be  poured : 
he  who  pours  must  face  the  early  morn.  Honey  must  be 
mingled  with  the  water,  then  thrice  nine  olive  branches 
placed  upon  the  ground,  then  the  invocation  to  the  Eri- 
nyans that  they  as  Eumenides  (changed  into  benignant 
powers)  may  receive  the  suppliant :  this  prayer  to  be 
brief,  whereupon  the  sinner  is  to  withdraw  without  turning 
around.  And  when  the  end  is  near,  the  sufferer  CEdipus 
turns  his  soul  to  Hermes,  guide  of  souls,  and  to  Persephone, 
with  a  farewell  blessing  to  the  deme  Kolonos  and  the  Attic 
commonwealth.  Theseus  alone  witnessed  this  removal  of 
the  redeemed  one.  The  stranger  passed  away  in  Eutha- 
nasia, as  in  a  moment,  no  groans  there,  no  painful  disease, 
a  marvellous  end  and  blessed.  The  golden  gleam  so-called, 
and  harmony  of  the  Greek  aspect  of  life,  we  fail  to  see  here 
in  this  posthumous  work  of  aged  Sophocles,  Sophocles  so 
often  distinguished  by  the  dramatic  prize,  fair  and  favored 
by  all  those  things  which  his  community  and  his  profession 
called  fortune  and  felicity.  For  the  Greek  soul  aspires 
not,  in  the  main,  beyond  sublunar  things :  it  is  a  Psalm  of 
long  Life  which  the  chorus  chants,  no  stout  Cato  here  : 
"  not  (1225)  to  have  come  into  being  at  all,  this  is  the 
triumphant  position  in  the  whole  range  of  discourse :  and 
the  other,  namely,  when  man  has  appeared,  that  he  should 
go  to  that  bourne,  whence  he  came,  as  speedily  as  possible 
—  this  is  easily  second.  For  when  youth  comes  on,  bear- 
ing frivolous  follies,  who  can  swerve  from  the  course  of 
many  troubles?  Who  is  not  within  travail?  Murders, 


188  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

riots,  jealousy,  contentions,  and  envy.  And  by  lot  comes 
last  old  age,  invalid,  unsociable,  unloved,  where  universal 
troubles  are  housed  with  troubles." 


NOTE.  —  The  great  services  of  Wilamowitz  in  the  field  of  under- 
standing Attic  Tragedy  better  need  no  encomium  from  my  pen.  They 
stand  out  the  more  when  one  views  the  futilities  of  Mahaffy  in  trying 
to  fit  things  into  the  Aristotelian  canon,  e.g.  "the  purifying  the 
terror  of  the  spectator,"  —  words,  mere  words.  The  teeming  num- 
ber of  superlatives  in  the  literary  valuations  of  Mahaffy,  while  it 
dazzles  youth  and  ignorance,  is  endured  painfully  by  those  who  read 
Greek  for  themselves.  The  looseness  of  Mahaffy's  hurried  pen 
strokes  may  be  well  exemplified  by  the  following  remarkable  state- 
ment (Chap.  16  of  his  "History  of  Classic  Greek  Literature").  "It 
was  possibly  on  account  of  these  liberties  that  the  tragic  poets  avoided 
(sic)  as  a  rule  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey.  .  .  ." 

The  spiritual  kinship  of  Sophocles  with  Herodotus  hardly  needs 
any  reassertion  or  new  demonstration.  Sophocles  sometimes  filled  in 
quite  deliberately,  as  in  the  allusion  to  certain  curious  usages  of  the 
Egyptians,  "  CEdip.  at  Kolonos,"  437.  This  in  turn  should  induce  us 
to  treat  conservatively  the  conceit  that  a  new  husband  may  be  found, 
but  not  a  new  brother,  "Antigone,"  909  sqq.,  with  which  compare  the 
wife  of  Intaphernes,  Herod.,  3,  118 :  "  O  King,  another  husband  I 
might  get,  if  God  should  will  it,  and  other  children,  if  I  should  lose 
these.  But  as  my  father  and  mother  live  no  more,  another  brother  I 
could  in  no  wise  get." 

As  to  Sophocles,  he  clearly  wrought  with  more  artistic  deliberation 
than  JSschylus.  One  may  ask  why,  after  his  death  and  that  of 
Euripides,  first-class  production  of  tragedy  terminated  at  Athens? 
It  was  not  merely  that  the  old  themes  had  been  written  into  the 
ground.  There  is  no  mechanical  or  "  sociological "  way  to  explain 
the  arising  of  a  literary  genius  of  the  first  order.  The  shallowness  of 
the  Taine-positivist  school  in  their  attempt  to  explain  literary  pro- 
duction by  ancestry,  environment,  and  so  further  —  this  shallowness 
has  been  for  some  time  masquerading  under  the  modest  veil  of 
Science,  falsely  so-called.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  productive  soul 
steadily  goes  on  seeking  and  appropriating  material  which  it  may 
assimilate  or  use  up  in  expanding  and  unfolding  its  innate  self,  food 
for  itself  but  for  itself  alone,  which  to  the  very  brothers  and  fellows 
of  the  author  may  be  mere  sticks,  stone,  or  stubble. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  SOPHISTS  AND  THE  NEW  LEARNING.     EURIPIDES 

ATHENS,  somehow,  became  the  most  attractive  domicile 
for  every  talent.  Of  course  I  do  not  refer  to  the  power  of 
enriching  oneself  —  a  power  so  viciously  and  so  falsely 
extolled,  while  I  write  and  where  I  write.  To  speak  well, 
to  prove  cogently,  to  compose  a  tragedy  or  comedy,  to 
write  a  chorus  for  men  and  boys,  to  be  an  architect, 
sculptor,  or  painter  of  skill  and  grace  beyond  one's  fellows 
—  all  such  talents  found  appreciation,  valuation,  rewards, 
in  the  political  centre  of  the  insular  and  riparian  domains, 
which  the  political  genius  of  Themistokles  had  based  on 
that  other  base  of  Greek  life,  the  sea.  A  sea  power, 
Athens  led  the  Delian  confederation,  and  while  she  ex- 
ploited her  so-called  allies  by  tribute  and  certain  vexatious 
forms  of  centralization,  she  certainly  offered  them  a 
capital  of  which  they  could  be  proud.  Though  no  Greek 
ever,  while  Greece  had  a  political  life,  was  proud  of  any 
polis  but  that  in  which  he  was  born. 

To  Athens,  in  the  time  of  Perikles,  converged  whatever 
was  endowed  with  talent:  and  the  glory  of  having  furnished 
matrix  for  many  germs  which  came  from  abroad,  must  not 
be  taken  from  her,  particularly  when  her  great  political 
rival,  Sparta,  the  perpetual  camp  on  the  Eurotas,  was 
holding  down  the  old  owners  of  the  soil,  as  her  serfs, 
with  inexorable  and  never  relaxing  rigor,  and  was  besides 
hermetically  secluding  herself  from  any  contact  or  in- 
fluence hostile  to,  or  incongruous  with,  her  own  cast-iron 
set  of  institutions.  So  too  a  son  of  Athens,  though  smit- 
ten by  the  bitter  rod  of  exile,  Thucydides,  uttered  the 
praise  of  his  state  in  the  famous  Epitaphios,  or  funeral 
address,  given  to,  or  actually  uttered  by,  Perikles,  son  of 
Xanthippos  (II,  35  sqq.*).  Any  one,  we  are  told  there, 

189 


190  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

was  welcome  to  come  to  Athens  to  learn,  welcome  to  see 
and  view  the  many  fair  things  there  built  or  established. 
Clearly  the  common  humanity  of  the  Greek  world  at  large 
was  not  so  friendly  to  strangers.  But  we  pass  on  to  the 
much  cited  phrase  (Chap.  40)  :  "  We  are  devoted  to  the 
beautiful  with  the  expenditure  of  moderate  sums,  we  pur- 
sue wisdom  without  softness"  —  enough:  it  is  the  key 
to  much  of  the  noblest  cultural  achievements  of  Athens. 
Whether  sober  valuation  of  history  will  subscribe  to  all 
points  of  that  eulogy  of  Athens,  is  quite  doubtful.  For 
it  was  penned  by  an  exile,  to  whom  the  aureole  around 
the  remote  acropolis  was  doubly  radiant  as  he  penned 
these  famous  lines  sojourning  among  strangers.  Besides 
he  summed  up  what  he  loved,  the  Athens  still,  in  the 
main,  yielding  herself  to  the  guidance  of  the  best  and 
strongest  of  her  own  citizens,  and  not  yet  stooping  to 
the  middle  and  lower  stratum  of  her  democracy  for 
heralds  and  counsellors.  And  still,  even  then,  precious 
forces  of  conservatism  had  been  truncated  as  Aristotle  has 
it  ("  Polit.,"  2,  12);  the  feebler  power  of  the  Areopagus 
had  been  cut  short  by  Ephialtes  and  Perikles.  Besides 
this,  a  form  of  people's  government  was  organized  there 
in  which  a  vast  proportion  of  the  electorate  was  paid  for 
some  share  (paid  some  fee  or  other),  some  share  in  the 
government,  and  the  Attic  sovereignty  was,  in  a  curious 
fashion,  carried  almost  into  every  household,  and  felt 
there  through  some  obols  or  other.  We  may  shrink  from 
adopting  as  our  own  Aristotle's  disgust  with  a  common- 
wealth which  makes  the  Banamo*  (the  handicraftsman 
or  mechanic)  a  citizen:  we  may  not  appreciate  the  disdain 
of  the  scholar:  but  we  must  not  forget  that  slavery  de- 
graded those  pursuits.  At  Athens  particularly  it  was 
unsafe  to  treat  any  slave  rudely  in  public,  because  one 
might  find  oneself  in  contact  with  one  who  belonged  to 
the  sovereign  demos.  But  such  a  sovereign  was  easily 
swayed  to  vicious  or  foolish  courses,  the  resolutions 
(psephismafa')  of  that  sovereign  people  could  override  or 
cancel  existing  laws  at  any  time — no  constitutional  check 
there,  no  system  of  balancing  forces.  "  And  this  "  (we 


THE  SOPHISTS  AND  THE  NEW  LEARNING       191 

quote  Aristotle,  "  Polit.,"  6,  4)  "happens  on  account  of 
the  demagogues."  Such  a  composite  monarch  often  acts 
the  autocrat  and  the  despot;  the  resolutions  of  the  Attic 
demos  often  corresponded  to  the  decrees  of  these 
latter.  One  of  the  keenest  and  sanest  political  thinkers 
of  antiquity,  Polybios  (6,  44),  compares  the  Attic  democ- 
racy to  a  vessel  lacking  a  master,  the  crew  of  which  heeds 
the  pilot  and  acts  together  only  when  the  presence  of  the 
foe  or  the  rising  of  a  tempest  compel  harmony,  but  other- 
wise the  performances  of  the  crew  on  that  ship  of  state 
were  an  exhibit  appearing  shameful  to  those  who  looked 
on  from  without. 

It  was  this  political  society  then  in  which  the  new  learn- 
ing of  the  so-called  Sophists,  and  the  poetical  mirroring  of 
all  these  new  forces,  had  a  free  field  and  swift  germination 
too  —  the  latter  in  the  plays  of  Euripides. 

The  puissant  pen  of  Plato  has  endowed  the  term  of 
Sophist  with  an  odium  which  is  imperishable.  Every 
professor  in  the  academic  field  of  a  scholar's  or  scientist's 
vocation  could  be  fairly  dubbed  a  Sophist  in  that  sense 
which  the  term  had  in  Greek  speech  before  Plato.  We 
are  now  all  agreed  that  most  of  them  lived  by  their 
lectures  or  instruction,  and  we  cannot  very  well  condemn 
that,  certainly. 

The  Humanists  of  Italy  in  the  fifteenth  century  afford 
many  curious  parallels  to  that  older  Greek  movement. 
The  latter,  however,  was  more  genuine  and  organic  —  the 
morbid  craze  for  mere  reproduction  in  the  Renaissance 
differed  greatly,  and  was  essentially  inferior  to  the  Greek 
movement  which  was  much  more  spontaneous  and  original 
and  dealt  with  and  involved  incisive  steps  in  the  history 
of  human  culture.  The  censure  then  and  the  delinea- 
tions of  Plato,  I  say,  must  be  accepted  not  with  one  but 
many  grains  of  salt  :  we  recognize  the  "  peremptory  ne- 
cessity," to  borrow  from  George  Grote,  "  of  not  accepting 
implicitly  the  censure  of  any  one,  where  the  party  in- 
culpated has  left  no  defence.  ..."  This  is  particularly 
important  when  we  look  into  the  convex  mirror  of  Attic 
Comedy  of  those  times  :  in  Aristophanes  particularly  the 


192  TESTIMOXIUM  ANIM.E 

ingredients  of  youth  and  impudence,  however  seasoned 
with  exquisite  genius  of  symbolism  and  invention,  have 
produced  a  result  of  caricature  which  is  often  absurd  and 
outrageous  caricature.  Whoever  takes  this  precocious  youth 
who  wrote  "  Banqueters, "  "  Babylonians,"  "Acharnians," 
"  Knights  and  Clouds,"  427-423  B.C.,  at  his  own  valuation, 
commits  a  gross  blunder,  entirely  pardonable  in  academic 
youth  but  inexcusable  in  mature  men.  But  I  must  not  be 
drawn  too  far  from  my  specific  and  proper  theme.  Few 
people  in  any  given  society  are  academic  or  analytic  in 
temperament  or  trained  power  —  the  movements  of  the 
great  bulk  of  given  contemporaries  are  strictly  gregarious, 
especially  in  the  segment  of  those  who  intrinsically  glory  in 
being  conformists  with  a  mode,  society  so-called.  So,  par- 
ticularly in  the  Athens  of  Perikles  and  of  Euripides,  Pro- 
tagoras of  Abdera,  Gorgias  the  Sicilian  Greek,  Prodikos 
of  Keos,  Hippias  of  Elis  —  all  non- Athenians,  were  re- 
ceived by  the  Attic  aristocracy  with  a  bountiful  hospi- 
tality and  with  an  admiration  entirely  devoid  of  criticism. 
The  art  of  a  rhetorical  delivery  with  definite  technical 
procedure  merely  allowed  the  Greeks  to  handle  their 
wonderfully  organized  and  tensile  speech  with  still  more 
consummate  force  and  grace.  But  logos,  their  own  word, 
a  lexical  lanus-face,  means  both  thought  and  utterance. 
Protagoras  held  that  every  theme  or  subject  permitted 
antithetical  judgments — dialectic  was  mightily  propelled; 
but  the  disciples  snapped  up  inferences  of  Wrong  and 
Right,  arguing  for  the  convertibility  of  all  merely  dialectic 
handling  of  any  given  theme,  which  to  many  conserva- 
tives seemed  to  destroy  the  very  verities  in  which  the 
institutions  of  life  and  citizenship  had  their  sphere  and 
being.  His  book  or  series  of  popular  lectures  began  with 
words  of  large  and  simple  structure  (Diog.  Laer., 
9,  51)  :  "  About  the  gods  I  am  not  able  to  know,  either 
that  they  are,  or  that  they  are  not :  for  many  are  the  things 
which  prevent  (me)  from  knowing :  both  the  obscurity 
(of  the  problem)  and  the  fact  that  brief  is  the  life  of 
man."  To  this  must  be  added  the  other  remnant  ($.) : 
"  The  measure  of  all  things  is  man,  of  those  that  are,  that 


THE  SOPHISTS  AND  THE  NEW  LEARNING       193 

they  are,  and  of  those  that  are  not,  that  they  are  not." 
To  rush  into  the  view  that  he  denied  all  truth  or  the 
possibility  of  all  positive  statements  would  be  hasty. 
Some  two  generations  before  him  the  travelling  poet 
Simonides,  whose  art  and  profession  was  inextricably 
bound  up,  like  that  of  Pindar,  with  the  institutional 
religion  of  the  Greeks,  this  same  Simonides,  I  say,  once 
on  a  western  tour,  sojourned  at  the  court  of  Hiero,  prince 
of  Syracuse.  When  this  ruler  had  asked  him,  what  and 
what  kind  of  being  G-od  was  (not  the  gods),  he  demanded 
one  day  (Cicero,  "I)e  Natura  Deorum"  1,  60)  for  reflecting. 
When  Hiero  put  the  same  question  to  him  the  next  day, 
Simonides  asked  for  two  days'  time  :  when  the  master  more 
often  kept  on  doubling  the  number  of  days,  and  Hiero 
marvelling  asked  why  he  acted  in  this  fashion,  "  Because," 
said  he,  "  the  more  I  ponder  the  matter,  the  more  obscure 
it  seems  to  me."  The  question  for  us  is  this  :  did  the 
new  learning  (together  with  the  physical  speculation  of 
Anaxagoras,  Herakleites,  or  Demokritos)  have  any  inci- 
sive and  profound  influence  upon  the  religious  and  moral 
ideas  of  the  Greeks,  particularly  of  Athens  and  Attica  ? 

Of  Perikles  indeed  Plutarch  says  that  he  owed  much 
of  his  trenchant  and  moving  personality  to  the  broadening 
influence  received  from  Anaxagoras.  But  the  people  at  large 
do  not  seem  to  have  been  greatly  swayed  by  the  new  move- 
ment. Protagoras  himself  thought  better  to  quit  Athens 
some  time  after  422-421  B.C.,  and  his  book  "  On  the  Gods  " 
was  burned  at  Athens  by  public  decree.  Zeller  says  the 
Sophists  "  lost  religion  "  :  what  kind  of  religion,  and  how 
much?  At  this  point  I  must  raise  my  voice  in  earnest 
protest  against  a  certain  facile  and  much  abused  practice. 
It  is  this  of  speaking  of  a  Greek  Aufklarung,  of  the 
defenders  of  the  old  "  faith  "  or  "  creed,"  even  of  speaking 
of  "  Theology  "  here  :  the  vicious  and  odious  absurdity 
based  at  bottom  on  academic  rancor,  of  speaking  of  a 
"  church  "  in  Greek  religion,  so-called  —  these  practices, 
I  say,  one  and  all,  are  preposterous  and  absurd.  These 
monstrosities  of  designation  are  much  employed  by  those 
who  in  the  grave  and  portentous  problems  of  Christian 


194  TESTIMONIUM  ANIALE 

revelation  sit  and  vote  with  the  Left  or  with  the  Mountain, 
as  they  said  in  Paris  in  Jacobin  times. 

But  it  is  time  to  turn  to  the  poet,  whom  many  students 
of  classic  culture  call  outright  the  poet  of  "  Greek  Enlight- 
enment" (Nestle)  or  "The  Rationalist"  (Verrall),  borrow- 
ing terms  from  modern  times  in  a  mechanical  and  shallow 
fashion.  Euripides  was  born  of  humble  Attic  people,  small 
tradespeople,  who  lived  from  hand  to  mouth.  Mnesarchos 
was  his  father's  name :  the  profoundly  gifted  child  was 
born  in  the  great  year  of  Salamis,  480.  As  a  youth  he 
pursued  athleticism;  on  the  verge  of  a  definite  career  he 
seems  for  a  while  to  have  taken  up  painting  as  a  profession  ; 
the  ancient  biographies  say  further  that  he  was  a  "  hearer  " 
of  Anaxagoras,  of  Prodikos,  of  Protagoras,  and  a  fellow  of 
Socrates.  He  seems  to  have  been  cursed  with  a  faithless 
wife.  He  was  immersed  in  the  new  virtuosity  of  dialectic 
and  rhetorical  debate  in  which  the  new  learning  of  his  day 
so  largely  found  its  practical  purpose :  he  took  up  the  pro- 
fession of  a  playwright  as  a  convenient  profession,  for  the 
civic  competitions  connected  with  the  two  anniversary 
celebrations  of  the  Theban  god  afforded  a  fair  living.  In 
our  own  day  perhaps  Euripides  would  have  betaken  himself 
to  magazine  writing  or  to  editorial  writing  or  to  some  other 
form  of  periodical  utterance  addressed  to  his  time  and  to  his 
world  ;  of  course  he,  too,  had  to  dispose  of  every  problem. 
He  rarely  won  the  first  prize.  His  mythical  heroes  and 
heroines,  whether  suitably  bedecked  with  heroic  garb  or 
not,  were  simply  mouthpieces  of  the  times  of  Euripides  : 
he  also  cared  little  for  conventional  obscuration  of  women, 
some  of  his  women  lectured  on  Anaxagorean  science  with 
a  positive  fervor  worthy  of  any  disciple  of  that  master : 
but  the  mythological  varnish  was  hopelessly  cracked,  and 
the  tragic  buskin  was  a  pretence  or  mask  that  deceived 
no  one. 

Declamatory  passages  and  commonplaces  from  his  plays 
were  the  most  widely  held  staple  of  culture  at  Athens 
when  Alcibiades  was  a  rising  politician  and  when  the  sea 
power  of  Attica  was  staked  on  the  desperate  venture  of 
the  Sicilian  expedition,  416-414  B.C. 


THE  SOPHISTS  AND  THE  NEW  LEARNING       195 

No  Greek  willingly  quit  the  soil  of  his  ancestors  to  lay 
his  gray  head  amid  strangers  ;  and  why  Euripides  first 
sought  residence  at  Magnesia  in  Thessaly  and  ultimately 
at  the  court  of  Archelaos  of  Macedon  no  one  now  perceives 
clearly  or  in  detail.  The  popular  tradition  had  it  that 
both  the  cenotaph  near  Athens  and  the  tomb  in  Macedon 
were  struck  by  lightning,  as  though  the  Olympians  had 
thus  marked  their  displeasure. 

But  let  us  see  now,  what  really  did  Euripides  do  to  the 
popular  and  political  legends  of  his  countrymen?  He 
could  not  remake  them.  He  could  not  get  a  chorus  at 
Athens  if  he  would  seriously  set  about  to  strip  Theseus  of 
his  glory  or  bring  lower  the  tutelary  Pallas  Athena  than 
the  Homeric  hexameters  held  her. 

A  recent  critic  puts  the  whole  problem  (I  mean  the 
problem  which  concerns  the  chief  quest  and  theme  of  my 
book)  thus :  "  It  was  the  conviction  only  that  God  must 
be  good,  which  impelled  him  to  enter  upon  a  polemic 
against  the  faith  (sic)  of  his  people."  Very  good,  but  put 
away  the  absurd  word,  faith:  noblest  word  where  it  belongs, 
but  dragged  in  with  monumental  incongruity  here.  What 
dogmatic,  what  transcendental,  what  moral  ingredient  was 
in  these  tenaciously  held  legends  of  numberless  valleys, 
towns,  mountains,  brooks,  villages,  capes,  hills,  and  rustling 
oaks  ?  What  binding  truth  ?  What  truth  ?  You  will 
find  it  very  difficult  to  carve  squares  of  masonry  out  of  the 
floating  fleecy  clouds  of  a  fair  day  in  June  ;  you  will  find 
it  simply  impossible  to  distil  the  glorious  tints  of  a  sunset 
into  a  refreshing  draught  of  invigorating  beverage ;  the 
deeply  pondering  playwright,  Euripides,  found  it  desper- 
ately hard  to  endow  the  legends  of  Greece  with  any  spirit- 
ual significance  whatsoever.  From  a  dramatist  with  a  wide 
scale  of  life  and  characters  you  can  excerpt  a  wide  range 
of  utterance  and  you  can  substantiate  any  form  of  institu- 
tional tradition  from  the  plays  of  Euripides  :  also,  you  can 
draw  forth  doubt  and  negation  and  analytical  valuation 
and  revaluation  on  every  topic  of  life  and  thought — but 
I  must  sum  up  my  personal  impression  of  Euripides  in  a 
few  simple  words.  The  deep  doubt  and  bitter  spirit  in 


196  TESTIMONIUM  AXBLE 

this  latter  poet  of  Greece  betoken  a  profoundly  earnest,  a 
supremely  spiritual  soul.  Indifference  is  often  veiled  by 
mechanical  conformity  with  tradition,  and  among  many 
acolytes  are  found  those  who  like  the  sons  of  Eli  are  adepts 
in  thrusting  deep  the  flesh  hook  to  bring  up  savory  pieces 
in  the  cauldron  of  the  sacrifice.  No  :  Euripides  was  pro- 
foundly in  earnest  and  suffered  not  a  little  in  his  profes- 
sional career  from  his  trenchant  dissent. 

But  the  plan  of  this  book  has  been  this,  that  the  minds 
of  the  Greeks  (as  later,  of  Romans)  must  make  utterance 
to  the  reader  in  fairly  chosen  and  fairly  significant  speci- 
mens of  their  own  literature. 

And  the  ninety-two  plays  were  turned  out  very  rapidly, 
of  course,  and  they  constitute  no  system  of  thought  or 
conduct.  I  find  that  there  is  given  no  preordained  order 
of  sequence  here ;  we  must  choose  as  best  we  may.  Eu- 
ripides was,  in  his  day  and  for  his  time,  an  intensely  mod- 
ern man,  and  modernity  was  writ  large  over  his  plays. 

The  Delphi,  too,  is  the  Delphi  of  440  B.C.,  filled  with 
art  works,  so  that  a  visitor  will  spend  three  days  in  view- 
ing them  ("  Androm.,"  1086).  Ulysses  is  a  cunning  popu- 
lar orator  who  sways  the  multitude  ("  Hecuba,"  131);  this 
is  the  honor  to  which  he  aspires  (16.,  254).  Euripides  at 
all  points  projects  his  present  into  the  legends  —  whereby 
the  disharmony  permeating  his  works  became  still  greater. 

The  dialectical  and  oratorical  performances  of  his  heroes 
and  heroines  could  have  been  spoken  in  Attic  ekklesia  or 
BuU  (popular  assembly  or  in  the  Council)  without  chang- 
ing word  or  phrase  or  the  particular  pitch  or  coloring  of 
the  discourse. 

This  would  enable  any  one  to  gather  theses  quite  anti- 
thetical, on  almost  any  given  subject,  — the  very  unsettling 
process,  the  very  fermentation  of  minds  then  going  on  is 
brought  home  to  us.  These  encounters  often  grate  harshly 
on  our  moral  feeling,  as  when  King  Admetos  demonstrates 
to  his  father  that  the  latter  should  have  died  instead  of 
the  king's  wife,  Alkestis  —  with  the  father's  rejoinder:  it 
is  grossly  unnatural,  though  good  controversial  exercise. 
Similarly  the  wordy  encounter  between  the  Trojan  exile- 


THE  SOPHISTS  AND  THE  NEW  LEARNING       197 

queen  Andromache  and  the  Grecian  young  queen  Hermi- 
one :  they  hurl  demonstrations  at  each  other  like  young 
collegians  at  a  debating  club,  say  at  Bryn  Mawr  or  Welles- 
ley  ;  later  on  in  the  same  play  Menelaos,  a  king  of  men 
in  the  old  epic,  figures  as  a  malignant  and  unscrupulous 
sophist.  If  Aspasia  impressed  the  Periclean  Age  as  an 
emancipated  woman,  the  Electras,  Helenas,  Medeas,  Mela- 
nippas,  on  the  stage  of  this  ultra-modern  playwright,  im- 
pressed that  age  no  less  so.  But  to  proceed. 

We  find,  indeed,  also,  the  old  common  and  traditional 
ground  of  life  and  conduct.  "  It  is  not  an  ancestral  law, 
that  fathers  should  die  for  their  children,  it  is  not  Greek  " 
("  Alkestis,"  682).  The  sweetness  of  revenge  :  "  What  is 
the  wiser,  and  what  is  the  fairer  prize  at  the  hands  of  the 
Gods  among  mortals,  than  to  firmly  hold  the  more  power- 
ful hand  above  the  peak  of  your  personal  foes?"  ("Bac- 
chse,"  877).  The  humanity  of  this  man  of  letters  is  limited 
by  many  things  —  one,  his  profound  hatred  for  Sparta: 
"  O  hateful  most  of  men  to  all  mankind,  ye  residents 
of  Sparta,  tricky  councillors,  the  lords  of  lies,  devisers 
of  trouble,  your  way  the  wriggling  serpent's  way,  no 
soundness  there  .  .  ."  ("Androm.,"  442).  The  gym- 
nastic displays  of  the  Spartan  girls  are  not  reconcilable 
with  the  proper  virtues  of  modest  womanhood  ($.,  595). 
The  poet  utters  the  common  boast  of  Attic  men,  the  at- 
mosphere and  climate,  so  exquisitely  tempered  between  the 
extremes,  the  common  mart  for  all  the  products  of  Europe 
and  of  Asia  (Fragm.  971).  But  we  meet  also  the  note 
of  the  citizen  of  the  world  (later  on  so  bravely  urged  by 
the  Stoics) :  "  every  air  the  eagle  can  traverse  ;  and  every 
land  a  fatherland  to  noble  souls"  (Fragm.  1034).  And: 
"  nature  is  the  fatherland  for  every  man's  pedigree " 
(Fragm.  1050).  Athens  is  called  "  Pallas's  holy  city  .  .  ." 
("Electra,"  1319),  rich  in  manifold  worship  of  the  gods  as 
Sophocles  testifies  in  405,  no  less  than  St.  Paul  did,  much 
later,  in  the  time  of  the  emperor  Claudius,  I  believe. 

A  citizen  of  any  Greek  commonwealth  owed  everything 
to  his  particular  land  and  little  particular  state :  there  was 
no  law  of  right  living  higher  than  this  obligation :  so 


198  TESTIMOXIUM  ANIALE 

Theseus  ("  Heraklidse,"  826)  called  his  fellow-citizens 
"  that  they  must  succor  the  soil  that  gave  them  suste- 
nance, that  gave  them  birth.  ..."  It  is  a  statute  of  all 
the  Grecian  world  to  abstain  from  deeds  unseemly  to  the 
corpses  of  the  dead :  it  is  the  fair  observance  of  such  laws 
of  Greek  civilization  which  preserves  the  commonwealths 
of  men  .  .  .  (" Supplices,"  311).  Similarly:  "Three  vir- 
tues are,  my  child,  in  which  thou  must  train  thyself,  to 
honor  the  gods,  and  the  parents  that  reared  thee,  and  the 
common  laws  of  Greece ;  and  doing  this  thou'lt  have  the 
wreath  of  good  repute  always  "  (Fragm.  219). 

So  too  we  meet  again  that  Greek  holding  of  a  local  and 
tutelary  god  or  goddess,  which  we  may  reckon  among  the 
political  sentiments  powerful  in  the  various  commonwealths 
to  the  very  end.  The  stranger  who  by  force  tries  to  carry 
away  suppliants  from  Attic  soil,  dishonors  the  gods  of 
Attica  ("  Heraklid.,"  78).  Or  again  :  "  Gods  not  inferior 
to  the  gods  of  Argos  have  we  for  our  allies,  my  lord :  for 
these  does  Hera  captain,  spouse  of  Zeus,  and  us,  Athena. 
And  I  do  say  that  with  a  view  of  faring  well  this  too  have 
we  on  our  side,  to  get  the  better  gods :  for  Pallas  never 
will  endure  defeat"  ($.,  347).  And  so  the  chorus  during 
the  battle  prays  to  Athena,  whose  is  the  soil  and  common- 
wealth of  which  she  is  "mother  and  mistress  and  guardian" 
($.,  770).  When  a  man  is  exiled  he  is  barred  from  his 
paternal  gods  ($.,  877).  If  there  were  no  other  role, 
then  indeed  the  playwright  of  the  new  learning  would 
never  have  excited  the  ire  of  the  conservatives.  But  let 
us  see  farther.  The  envy  of  the  gods,  the  limited  and 
unstable  happiness  of  man :  this  too  we  can  abundantly 
verify.  When  Hercules  delivers  to  King  Admetos  the 
latter's  queen  recovered  from  death,  he  says :  "  (There) 
You  have  her.  And  may  there  not  arise  some  envy  of 
the  gods"  ("Alk.,"  1135).  To  Andromache  (v.  100): 
"One  never  should  call  any  mortal  happy  before  you've 
seen  the  last  day  of  the  man  deceased,  how  he  has  crossed 
entire  the  realm  of  light  and  will  arrive  below."  Or 
again :  "  Therefore  let  no  evil-doer,  if  well  he  runs  the 
first  part  of  the  course,  seem  to  me  to  gain  victorious  ver- 


THE  SOPHISTS  AND  THE  NEW  LEARNING       199 

diet,  before  he  reaches  the  line  of  goal  and  make  the  run- 
ner's turn  where  life  is  ended"  ("EL,"  958).  Similarly 
he  says  in  the  "  Supplices  "  (270) :  "  Nothing  exists  that 
prospers  to  the  end."  "  The  deity  doth  overturn  again 
all  things  ..."  (331).  "  Wrestling  bouts  make  up  our 
life  :  some  prosper  soon,  some  once  again,  and  other  mor- 
tals have  so  done.  The  Power  above  has  wanton  sport : 
from  the  unfortunate  he  receives  honors  that  the  former 
may  have  a  stroke  of  fortune :  and  the  prosperous,  dread- 
ing to  leave  this  vital  breath,  extols  high  "  (the  power 
above,  552).  The  essence  of  prayer  there,  which  was 
exclusively  concerned  with  worldly  welfare,  not  at  all 
with  any  spiritual  concerns.  Nothing  more  vacillating 
than  human  fortune  :  "  One  man  was  prosperous  once,  but 
that  did  God  conceal  from  those  who  once  did  shine :  nods 
livelihood,  nods  fortune,  unstable  as  the  breath  of  breezes  " 
(Fragm.  152).  "For  many  a  day  have  I  been  looking 
into  mortals'  fortunes,  how  readily  they  do  shift  about :  for 
who  has  fallen  stands  upright,  and  he  who  erst  did  pros- 
per, has  a  fall "  (Fragm.  264).  "  For  all  mankind  and  not 
for  us  alone,  either  immediately  or  in  the  course  of  time, 
the  power  above  (daimon)  trips  up  their  lives,  and  no 
one  prospers  through  the  end"  (275).  More  grave  and 
gloomy  still :  "  I  do  declare  it  best  of  all  —  what  all  the 
world  repeats  —  best  of  all  for  mortal  man  not  to  have 
been  born  at  all "  (287)  (cf.  900).  "  Never  should  one 
reckon  likely  that  a  wicked  man's  prosperity  and  con- 
temptuous felicity  are  firmly  founded,  nor  the  generation 
of  the  unrighteous :  for  Time  that  knows  no  sire  brings 
on  the  measurements  of  justice,  and  shows  the  wickedness 
of  men  to  me  "  (305).  "  You  see  the  princes  waxed  pow- 
erful through  large  causes,  how  little  are  the  things  that 
trip  them  up,  and  a  single  day  takes  down  the  one  from 
high,  and  puts  aloft  the  other.  A  winged  thing  is  wealth : 
for  those  who  had  it  once,  these  I  behold,  prostrate  on 
their  backs,  fallen  from  their  hopes  "  (424).  "  Prosperity 
I  nowhere  rate  'mong  mortal  men,  which  God  wipes  out 
more  easily  than  a  painting  "  (621). 

Life  and  death  are  the  central  theme  of  the  "  Alkestis  "  — 


200  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

the  commonplaces  of  helpless  humanity  everywhere  recur 
there:  "No  thing  is  there  more  precious  than  life"  (301). 
"  Time  will  soften  thy  grief,  the  one  who  died  is  nothing  " 
(381).  "Thou  must  perceive  that  dying  is  the  due  for 
all  of  us"  (418).  Shorn  locks,  black  garb,  were  symbols: 
and  even  horses'  manes  were  sometimes  shorn  (427). 
"May  the  earth  fall  lightly  upon  thee,  lady  .  .  ."  (463). 
"  The  time  below  I  reckon  long,  and  living,  little  :  but 
still  'tis  sweet  ..."  (692). 

"  May  graciously  the  nether  Hermes  and  Hades  receive 
thee  :  and  if  the  good  have  some  advantage  there,  mayest 
thou  share  in  these  and  have  thy  seat  with  Pluto's  bride  " 
(743).  And  so  the  heroic  trencherman  Hercules  himself 
is  made  to  say  :  "  to  die  ...  it  is  the  due  of  mortals  all, 
nor  is  there  any  mortal  man  who  fully  knows  the  morrow, 
whether  he  will  live  :  for  Fortune's  lot  is  all  obscure  what 
path  'twill  take :  one  cannot  teach  it,  cannot  capture  it 
by  skill  of  craft.  When  this  you've  heard  and  learned 
from  me,  enjoy  thyself,  drink,  do  rate  the  life  from  day 
to  day  thine  own  —  the  rest,  of  Fortune's  sphere."  Curi- 
ous son  of  Zeus,  this  viveur,  and  erstwhile  heroic  saviour 
of  mankind. 

And  here  we  may  well  begin  to  inquire  more  closely 
how  this  earnest  soul,  Euripides,  began  to  turn  his  back 
upon  the  legends  of  the  gods  of  Greece.  Neoptolemos, 
son  of  Achilles,  is  slain  in  the  very  sanctuary  of  Apollo 
at  Delphi :  after  completing  his  report  the  messenger  goes 
on  to  say  ("  Androm.,"  1161) :  "  such  things  the  Lord 
who  gives  oracles  to  the  others,  the  judge  for  all  mankind 
of  what  is  righteous,  such  things  he  wrought  on  Achilles's 
son  who  paid  the  penalty,  and  Apollo  made  remembrance, 
like  a  wicked  man,  of  ancient  feuds,  .  .  .  how  then  can 
he  be  wise  ?  .  .  ."  The  gods  are  concerned  for  Troy, 
"although  it  fell  through  Pallas's  eagerness"  (16.,  1252). 
In  the  "  Helena,"  Euripides  adopts  the  palinody  of  Stesi- 
choros,  viz.,  that  the  real  Helena  was  translated  to  Egypt 
during  the  Trojan  war,  which  was  fought  for  a  mere 
shadow  or  image  .  .  .  and  the  chorus  passes  on  to  utter 
these  words  (v.  1137) :  "  What  is  God  or  not-God  or  the 


THE  SOPHISTS  AND  THE  NEW  LEARNING       201 

intermediate  substance,  what  mortal  man  will  say  that  he 
having  searched  has  found  the  farthest  limit  (a  mortal 
man  I  say),  who  beholds  the  affairs  of  the  gods  bounding 
hitherward  and  again  thitherward  and  again  (in  another 
direction)  with  contradictory  and  unhoped  for  strokes  of 
fortune  ?  "  Better  no  existence  after  death  :  "  Let  these 
things "  (says  the  maiden  Makaria,  "  Heraklidte,"  591), 
"be  for  me  precious  things  in  place  of  children  and  of 
virgin  espousal,  if  there  is  anything  underground.  Still, 
may  indeed  there  be  not  anything.  For  if  even  there  we 
mortals  that  have  died  shall  have  cares,  I  do  not  know 
whither  I  shall  turn.  For  dying  is  believed  to  be  the 
greatest  remedy  for  troubles." 

Hercules  really  caught  the  Nemean  lion  in  a  trap  and 
then  claimed  to  have  throttled  him  by  his  mighty  arms 

—  this  in  a  hostile  argument  in  the  mouth  of  a  persecutor 
("  Hercules  Furens,"  153). 

So  Amphitruo  challenges  the  very  Zeus,  who  had 
occupied  his  bed,  for  loyalty  and  devotion  to  his  own 
offspring  (i'J.,  339).  "If  the  gods  had  intelligence  and 
wisdom,  as  men  do  judge,  a  twofold  measure  of  the  bloom 
of  youth  would  bear  off,  conspicuous  seal  of  their  good- 
ness, all  those  who  have  a  share  of  the  latter  :  but  after 
death  again  into  beams  of  Sun  they  would  go  for  a  two- 
fold measure  of  a  course  of  life.  But  the  ill-born  would 
have  a  single  span  of  life,  and  thereby  it  were  possible  to 
recognize  the  evil  and  the  good  among  men  .  .  .  but  now 
no  clearly  appearing  definition  is  there  from  the  gods  for 
the  good  men  and  the  wicked  ones  ..."  still  the  general 
Greek  idea  that  piety  is  concerned  chiefly  with  prosperity 

—  physical  and  worldly  blessings  the  chief  or  sole  end  of 
worship  and   religious  concern  .   .   .   (ib.,  v.  655).     We 
see  that  Euripides,  as  a  man  of  letters,  if  not  of  personal 
conviction,  brings  in  the  Pythagorean  notion  of  a  rebirth. 
Further  on  in  this  same  play  Theseus,  when  he  ponders 
on  the  woes  of  Hercules  as  due  to  the  rancor  of  Hera, 
broadens  out  into  the  general  observation  (1313):  "No 
mortal  man  is  free  from  corruption  in   his   fortunes,  no 
God,   if   indeed   the   legends   of  the  poets   are  not  false 


202  TESTIMOXIUM  ANDLE 

(confirmation  again  of  Her.,  2,  53) :  did  they  not  seek 
one  another's  couch  in  unions  which  no  law  permits  ? 
Did  they  not  cast  in  chains  disgraceful  their  own  fathers 
for  the  sake  of  autocratic  power  ?  But  still  Olympus  is 
their  domicile  and  they  endure  the  fact  that  they  have 
sinned." 

So  the  temple-servant  Ion,  fruit  of  a  secret  amour  of 
Apollo,  is  puzzled  as  to  the  righteousness  of  the  prophetic 
God.  A  few  fragments  may  be  added  for  further  illus- 
tration of  this  theme :  and  chiefly  it  is  the  ancient  crux 
of  questioning  souls:  successful  evil  (Fragm.  228)  :  "  Does 
any  one  really  say  that  there  are  gods  in  heaven  ?  They 
are  not,  no  indeed,  unless  one  foolishly  would  resort  to 
the  ancient  legend.  ...  I  do  declare  that  autocratic 
power  kills  very  many  men,  and  confiscates  their  wealth, 
and  does  transgress  its  oaths  in  sacking  towns  ;  and  doing 
this  has  more  prosperity  than  those  who  live  in  peaceful 
piety,  day  by  day .  .  ."  (Fragm.  294).  "  But  I  would  have 
you  know,  if  gods  some  shameful  deed  perform,  they  are 
not  gods."  That  Euripides  was  compelled  by  sheer  ne- 
cessity to  retract  certain  lines,  uttered  before  twenty 
thousand  Attic  hearers  —  as  of  the  paternity  of  Hercules 
—  is  quite  credible  (v.  Fragm.  594). 

But  further:  "  See  ye,  how  'tis  fair  among  the  gods,  too, 
to  gain  lucre:  and  that  God  is  most  admired  who  holds 
the  greatest  amount  of  gold  in  his  temples  ..."  (792). 

Clearly  in  his  own  deep  conviction  Euripides  held  the 
higher  view  of  divine  goodness  and  moral  nobility,  widely 
divergent  from  the  crude  figures  of  the  tradition,  gigantic 
forces  of  whim  or  self-indulgence  to  be  cajoled  and  feared. 
Hercules  is  the  mouthpiece  of  the  dramatist-philosopher 
(as  Clement  of  Alexandria  aptly  calls  him)  when  he  says 
("Hercul.  Fur.,"  1345):  "I  neither  hold  that  the  gods 
love  couches  that  Justice  would  prohibit,  and  that  they 
clap  fetters  on  hands,  I  neither  have  ever  held  a  proper 
thing  to  credit,  nor  will  I  ever  be  persuaded,  that  one 
God  has  become  the  master  of  another.  For  Crod  (o  #609) 
if  indeed  he  is  rightly  Gf-od,  is  in  need  of  nothing :  these 
are  the  wretched  tales  of  poets, "  Who  will  not  here  turn 


THE  SOPHISTS  AND  THE  NEW  LEARNING       203 

to  the  discourse  of  St.  Paul  spoken  at  Athens  (Acts  17, 
25)  :  "  Neither  is  worshipped  with  men's  hands,  as  though 
he  needed  anything.  ..."  And  the  positive  asseveration 
that  there  is  a  Deity  (Fragm.  905) :  "  Who  seeing  these 
things  does  not  perceive  God  with  his  intelligence,  and 
casts  far  away  the  tortuous  deception  of  the  scientists 
delving  in  things  above,  whose  pernicious  tongue  casts 
forth  at  random  concerning  things  non-apparent.  ..." 
But  perhaps  divine  things  are  beyond  human  comprehen- 
sion (Fragm.  925)  :  "  By  many  shapes  of  wise  conceits  the 
gods  do  trip  us  up,  for  in  their  essence  they  are  stronger 
than  we."  We  must  never  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that 
the  dialectic  and  argumentative  itch  in  Euripides  was  so 
strong  that  positive  and  negative  theses  may  be  cited  on 
the  gravest  matters :  while  the  essential  dissent  from  the 
legends  of  the  poets  was  palpable  enough  and  felt  strongly 
by  his  contemporaries. 

But  we  must,  further,  make  some  selection  from  the 
very  numerous  passages  in  which  Euripides  puts  forward 
his  moral  postulates.  The  central  idea  for  him  is  Dike, 
Justice.  Orestes  says  ("EL,"  583):  "or  one  must  no 
longer  believe  in  Gods,  if  injustice  will  outrank  jus- 
tice .  .  ."  and  (t'5.,771):  "Ye  gods,  and  Justice  that 
seest  all  things,  at  last  hast  thou  come."  Elsewhere 
(102  sqq.,  "Heraklid.")  the  gods  will  not  permit  sup- 
pliants to  be  torn  from  their  altars,  "  for  puissant  Justice 
will  not  suffer  this.  .  .  ."  "  Comest  thou,  hateful  person  ? 
did  Justice  capture  thee  in  time  .  .  .  ?"  (t'6.,  941)  "if  Jus- 
tice is  still  pleasing  to  the  Gods"  ("Hercul.  Fur.,"  813). 
"  One  thing  alone  I  need,  to  have  the  gods,  all  those  who 
reverence  Justice"  ("Suppl.,"  594).  The  moral  law  is 
no  less  binding  for  gods  as  for  men :  "  For  whatever 
mortal  man  is  wicked  in  his  being,  him  the  gods  do 
punish.  How  then  'tis  just  that  you  shall  write  the 
statutes  for  mortal  man,  and  then  yourself  be  burdened 
with  the  charge  of  transgressing  the  laws?"  ("Ion,"  440). 
"Of  Justice  they  do  say  she  is  a  child  of  Time,  and  she 
points  out  all  those  of  us  who  are  not  evil"  (Fragm.  223). 
"  For  I  see  that  in  time  Justice  brings  all  things  to  light 


204  TESTIMONIUM  ANI^LE 

for  mortals"  (Fragm.  550).  "When  I  do  see  the  fall  of 
wicked  men,  then  I  do  say  there  is  a  race  of  powers 
above"  (Fragm.  581).  "One  righteous  man  outweighs  in- 
numerable hosts  of  those  who  are  not  just,  for  he  doth  get 
the  deity  and  Justice  for  his  allies"  (Fragm.  588).  "The 
sphere  of  Gods  is  not  unjust:  but  among  wicked  men 
these  things  are  sore  and  sick  and  so  have  much  confu- 
sion" (609).  "But  whoever  of  mortals  commits  some 
evil  thing  from  day  to  day  and  thinks  he  doth  escape  the 
notice  of  the  gods,  he  entertains  a  bad  conceit  and  is 
taken  in  this  same  conceit:  when  Justice  happens  keeping 
leisure,  he  (suddenly)  does  pay  the  penalty  for  the  evils 
he  began"  (832).  "Dost  thou  believe  the  gods  are  in- 
dulgent, whenever  one  would  by  an  oath  escape  from 
death,  or  the  prison  or  the  woes  of  hostile  violence  or 
share  a  mansion  with  children  who  slew  their  own  sire? 
either  they  (the  gods)  are  more  unintelligent  than  mor- 
tal men,  or  they  consider  random,  likely  things  as  valued 
higher  than  Justice "  (1030).  He  would  deny  the  right 
of  asylum  to  the  wicked  (1036).  The  submission  of  chil- 
dren to  their  father  is  justice"  (i.e.  a  form  of  righteous- 
ness, 111). 

As  to  Euripides's  view  of  the  creation,  it  seemed  fairly 
established  that  he  was  greatly  impressed  by  Anaxagoras. 
At  least  he  sought  from  that  thinker  on  organic  life  to  ac- 
quire or  appropriate  some  adequate  or  satisfying  concep- 
tion of  how  life  and  order  came  from  chaos  and  out  of  the 
primitive  mixture  of  all  elements  of  being,  through  the 
powerful  action  of  Mind,  Spirit,  or  Intelligence  (-2Vbw*), 
which  brought  the  homogeneous  elements  together.  The 
poetical  narrative  of  Hesiod  should  not  by  us  be  conceived 
as  a  little  manual  of  "belief"  or  "creed"  :  there  was  no 
abandonment  of  such  in  any  attempt  to  comprehend  this 
universe.  Neither  the  commonwealth  nor  the  institutional 
ritual  of  the  same  took  any  definite  ground  with  reference 
to  such  problems.  It  is  possible  that  the  dramatist-phi- 
losopher sought  to  enthrone  the  Active  Spirit  or  Intelli- 
gence of  the  Ionic  thinker  as  a  veritable  creator  worthy 


THE  SOPHISTS  AND  THE  NEW  LEARNING       205 

of  reverent  acclamation  and  worship.  "  Thee,  self-sprung, 
who,  in  ethereal  revolution  didst  involve  the  creation  of 
all  things,  about  whom  is  light,  about  whom  dusky  night 
with  varied  tints,  and  the  infinite  array  of  constellations 
perpetually  performs  its  choric  movement  ..."  (596). 
"  Great  Earth  and  Ether  of  Zeus  the  begetter  of  men  and 
of  gods,  and  she,  conceiving  the  dripping  globules  of 
moisture  gives  birth  to  mortals,  gives  birth  to  food  and 
tribes  of  beasts,  whence  not  unjustly  she  has  been  deemed 
the  Mother  of  all.  And  those  things  which  spring  from, 
earth,  to  earth  they  do  recede ;  but  those  that  budded  from 
ethereal  sperm,  to  heaven's  firmament  again  they  go  and 
nothing  dies  of  what  eventuates  in  being,  but  separated 
one  from  the  other  displays  another  shape "  (836). 
"  Beholdest  thou  on  high  this  boundless  ether  that  also 
does  compass  about  the  Earth  in  fluid  embrace?  This 
deem  thou  Zeus, this  hold  thou  God"  (935;  cf.  938,  975). 
"  Happy  the  man  who  got  the  learning  of  searching  en- 
quiry, neither  setting  out  for  harm  to  citizens,  nor  to  un- 
righteous deeds,  but  fully  viewing  the  unaging  order  of 
immortal  nature,  where  and  how  it  was  builded.  Such 
minds  are  never  beset  with  design  of  evil  deeds"  (902). 
The  fervor  of  the  poet  needs  no  emphasis  from  the  present 
writer. 

There  are  two  heroes  in  the  plays  of  Euripides  who  are 
distinguished  by  chastity,  Bellerophontes  of  Corinth,  and 
Hippolytos  at  Troezen,  the  son  of  Theseus.  Chastity  was 
no  moral  postulate  among  the  Greeks  at  large,  it  is  to 
them  a  startling  and  utterly  remarkable  phenomenon  in 
the  sphere  of  conduct  —  a  prodigium.  There  is  a  keen  ob- 
servation (in  Fragm.  132)  that  Eros  is  indeed  the  autocrat 
of  gods  and  men  and  that  he  is  malignant  in  this  :  he 
emphasizes  comeliness  but  leaves  the  lovers  often  in  the 
lurch  of  their  own  passion.  .  .  .  Love  "loves  to  rule  the 
worst  part  of  our  mind  "  (139).  On  the  whole  there  seems 
to  be  no  diminution  in  the  worship  of  Eros,  i.e.  the  un- 
questioning and  unconditional  submission  to  this  impulse, 
there  seems  to  be  not  any  advance  whatever  from  the  low 
level  of  Homer  —  nay  a  grave  deterioration  and  decadence; 


206  TESTIMONIUM  ANIM.E 

cf .  Fragm.  271.  No  worshipper  is  greater  or  better  than  his 
gods.  It  strikes  us  as  uncouth  or  incongruous  that  the 
"  Hippolytos  "  presents  Kypris  and  Artemis  as  two  forces, 
equally  divine:  clearly  Unchastity  vastly  stronger  than 
the  Goddess  of  Chastity,  they  maintaining  a  curious  neu- 
trality towards  one  another.  Clearly  it  is  the  current 
conviction  of  the  Greek  people  which  the  old  nurse  of 
queen  Phaidra  utters  (451) :  "  All  those  who  have  the 
writings  of  the  men  of  old,  and  who  themselves  are  ever 
conversant  with  learned  lore,  they  know  that  once  upon 
a  time  Zeus  was  enamoured  to  unite  with  Semele,  that 
once  upon  a  time  the  radiant  Aurora  carried  off  Kephalos 
to  dwell  among  the  gods,  for  sake  of  love's  desire  .  .  . 
if  among  thy  deeds  the  good  outweigh  the  evil  —  thou 
art  but  human  —  thou  wouldst  fare  right  well"  (471). 
Did  the  devotees  of  the  Orphic  ritual,  an  esoteric  creed, 
lead  a  purer  life?  Was  chastity  at  all  a  part  of  their 
religion  ?  Hippolytos  indeed  is  so  classified  by  the  poet's 
determination  (952  sqq.~).  Hippolytos  has  a  "  virgin  soul " 
(1007),  but  his  tragic  death  is  half  explained  by  his  stub- 
bornness and  pride  :  one  cannot,  in  all  fairness,  avoid  the 
general  conclusion  that  it  is  folly  to  resist  these  appetites ; 
and  there  is  simply  no  highway  nor  path  from  this  Welt- 
anschauung to  that  other  one,  expressed,  e.g.,  in  these 
words  (I  Cor.  9,  25):  "  And  every  man  that  striveth  for 
the  mastery  is  temperate  in  all  things.  Now  they  (at  the 
Isthmian  games,  e.g.*)  do  it,  to  obtain  a  corruptible  crown  ; 
but  we  an  incorruptible."  Or  again  :  "What !  know  ye 
not  that  your  body  is  the  temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost  which 
is  in  you,  which  ye  have  of  God,  and  ye  are  not  your  own  ?  " 
(I  Cor.  6,  19).  And  the  hierodules  of  Corinth  were  an 
integral  part  of  that  "service"  of  that  Kypris  who  in  the 
"  Hippolytos  "  of  Euripides  triumphs  over  Artemis.  What 
particular  purging  or  refinement  of  the  affections  may  be 
derived  from  this  particular  drama,  even  Aristotle,  nay 
even  Professor  Wilamowitz  would  hardly  succeed  in  set- 
ting forth  to  us  ordinary  readers. 

The  satisfaction  of  the  angry  displeasure  of  the  goddess 
of  lust   (1325)   is  the   consummation   furnished   by  the 


THE  SOPHISTS  AND  THE  NEW  LEARNING        207 

traditional  legend, — but  whether  it  was  any  consumma- 
tion satisfying  the  nobler  soul  of  the  searching  author, 
I  doubt.  And  the  deeply  pondering  mind  is  revealed  in 
two  passages  which  must  not  be  absent  from  this  page. 
The  one  on  the  essential  divergence  between  the  insight 
and  the  will  of  man:  "For  otherwise  before  on  night's 
long  couch  have  I  reflected  what  it  is  that  ruins  human 
life.  And  'tis  not  from  the  essence  of  their  reason,  so  it 
seems  to  me,  that  men  fail  in  conduct.  For  many  have 
clear  understanding.  For  thus  I  think  this  must  be 
viewed :  The  good  we  know  and  grasp  it  with  our  mind, 
but  toil  not  hard  for  it,  some  from  indolence,  some  rating 
higher  some  pleasure  than  the  good."  (The  words  are 
given  to  Phaidra,  "H.,"  374.)  Another  notable  utter- 
ance, still  more  gloomy:  here  I  present  Wilamowitz's  own 
version  (Englished): 

"Truly,  when  I  grasp  the  faith  in  divine  government, 
then  anxious  pain  departs.  But  the  desire  of  my  faith, 
to  find  a  ruling  providence,  is  wrecked  as  soon  as  I  con- 
template the  deeds  and  sufferings  of  human  kind"  (H. 
1104).  

Clearly,  Euripides  was  not  greatly  elated  by  his  con- 
sciousness of  Greekdom,  nor  deeply  blessed  by  the  bless- 
ings of  a  fictitious  "humanity"  invented  by  modern 
litterateurs  as  a  drapery  of  exquisite  folds  for  that  wooden 
puppet  of  academic  tradition. 

Euripides  incessantly  deprecated  the  overvaluation  of 
wealth, — of  birth, — but  even  the  current  athleticism  of 
his  fellow-Greeks  found  no  favor  in  his  eyes.  "While 
evils  numberless  in  Greece  prevail,  none  is  more  evil  than 
the  tribe  of  athletes,  who  first  do  not  learn  well  to  live, 
nor  could  they:  for  how  could  one  who  is  a  slave  to 
mastication  and  subject  to  his  belly's  needs,  acquire  a 
prosperity  greater  than  his  sire's?  Nor,  on  the  other 
hand,  are  they  enabled  to  toil  in  poverty  and  keep  their 
oar  with  fortune's  plying  stroke:  for  untrained  in  good 
habits,  'tis  cruelly  hard  for  them  to  shift  to  desperate 
vicissitudes.  Brilliantly  conspicuous  in  their  bloom  of 


208  TESTIMONIUM  ANIALE 

manhood,  statues  of  divine  perfection,  their  common- 
wealth's own,  they  stride  along ;  but  when  bitter  old  age 
comes  to  them,  like  threadbare  cloaks  that  lose  the  nap 
of  woof — 'tis  over  with  them. 

"I  also  blame  the  custom  of  the  Greeks,  who  for  the 
sake  of  such  make  gathering  and  hold  in  honor  useless 
pleasure  for  a  dinner's  sake.  For  who,  who  wrestled 
well,  what  nimble-footed  man,  or  who  that  raised  the 
discus,  or  thumped  some  jaw  with  skill,  did  aught  avail 
his  ancestral  commonwealth  after  he  received  a  wreath? 
Will  they  give  battle  to  the  foe  with  discus  in  their 
hands,  or,  without  shields,  with  push  of  feet  drive  enemy 
from  their  fatherland?  None  will  pursue  such  foolish 
things  when  he  embattled  stands  close  to  the  steel  array. 
The  wise  men  and  the  good — these  are  they  who  should 
be  crowned  with  leafy  wreath  and  all  who  lead  their 
commonwealth  in  noble  things,  men  who  are  self-con- 
trolled and  righteous"  (Fragm.  284). 


I  close  this  chapter  with  that  Hamlet-note  of  actual 
humanity: 

"O  ye  mortals  enamoured  of  existence  who  yearn  to 
behold  the  oncoming  day  while  carrying  burden  of  num- 
berless woes — so  deeply  is  imbedded  the  love  of  life  in 
human  kind.  For  what  it  is  to  live  we  know;  but,  unac- 
quainted as  we  are  with  dying,  each  wight  doth  fear  to 
leave  this  light  of  solar  rays"  (Fragm.  832). 

NOTE.  —  The  citations  from  the  plays  of  Euripides  have  been 
made  from  the  text  of  Adolph  Kirchhoff,  (Berlin,  1867-1868)  the  emi- 
nent academic  successor  to  Boeckh,  or  Bekker.  The  fragments  were 
cited  from  Nauck's  edition,  Leipzig,  1866.  A  notable  recent  book  is 
that  of  W.  Nestle,  "Euripides  der  Dichter  der  griechischen  Auf kid- 
rung"  Stuttgart,  1901.  There  is  a  clever  review  of  this  book  by 
Thaddaeus  Zielinski,  in  the  "Neue  Jahrbucher"  1902.  The  dialectic 
faculty  of  Euripides  to  advance  arguments  on  both  sides  of  every 
problem  is  well  known :  hundreds  of  long  passages  are  merely  versi- 
fied essays  on  the  problems  of  his  own  time,  the  more  so  as  all  verities 
seemed  to  become  problematical  to  many  men  of  his  place  and  time. 

An  English  scholar,  Verrall  of  Cambridge,  published,  in  1895,  a 
series  of  studies  on  three  of  the  plays  ("  Alcestis,"  "  Ion,"  "  Iphigenia 


THE  SOPHISTS  AND  THE  NEW  LEARNING       209 

Taurica  ")  which  he  called  :  "  Euripides  the  Rationalist :  a  Study  in 
the  History  of  Ai-t  and  Religion "  —  academic  phrases  and  labels 
largely  forced  in  their  application. 

The  "  religion  "  so  called,  with  which  Euripides  had  to  do  :  should 
we  actually  strain  terms  by  using  the  word  at  all.  The  religiosity  of 
Euripides  impresses  me  as  much  more  profound  than  that  of  Sopho- 
kles,  as  much  more  spiritual  in  cast  than  that  of  ^Eschylus.  The 
question  is  not,  whether  we  have  more  sympathy  with  the  path  of 
Euripides,  but,  whether  he  seriously  impressed,  or  helped  to  disestab- 
lish the  ritual,  and  the  institutional  anniversaries  of  the  Attic  com- 
monwealth. Apart  from  these,  every  one  knew  (Her.,  2,  53)  that  the 
"  gods  "  so  called,  were  largely  shapes  of  deliberate  poetical  creation, 
largely  a  reproduction  of  all  sides  of  man,  an  apology  too  for  pretty 
nearly  every  typical  sin  or  moral  weakness  in  man. 

He  who  can  separate  the  reeling  satyr  from  the  serious  background 
of  Attic  life  presented  to  us  in  the  plays  of  Aristophanes,  will  not 
fail  to  feel  that  the  Homeric  type  is  over  all :  the  naive  merging 
oneself  in  nature  and  looking  for  no  more  divine  ordinances  than 
those  afforded  by  her  in  her  periodic  mutations  —  this  is  Attic  re- 
ligion, if  any  one  wishes  to  use  that  word  at  all.  Another  modern 
volume  on  Euripides  is :  "  Euripides  and  the  Spirit  of  his  Dramas," 
by  Paul  Decharme,  translated  by  James  Loeb,  1906,  Macmillan  :  which 
book  in  the  earlier  portion  deals  to  some  extent  with  our  general 
theme.  The  conception  of  Greek  religion  so  called,  as  viewed  by 
Decharme,  seems  to  me  to  fall  far  short  of  a  precise  and  historically 
correct  grasp :  the  book  is  full  of  palliation,  and  of  injection  of 
modern  ideas.  In  concluding  this  note,  I  append  grave  words  never 
yet  presented  in  an  English  version,  —  for  this  book  is  written  in 
the  profound  conviction  that  there  is  a  consummation  of  the  most 
precious  things  concerning  man  in  a  certain  and  definite  religion, 
not  established  or  disestablished  by  academic  assent  or  dissent  or  by 
any  measure  or  kind  of  cogitation  or  speculation.  The  passage  I 
refer  to  is  among  the  concluding  paragraphs  of  Naegelsbach's  "  Die 
nachhomerische  Theologie  des  griechischen  Volksglaubens  bis  auf  Alex- 
ander" 1857,  p.  476  :  "  But  this  speculation  is  never  transmuted 
into  religion,  and  that  indeed  not  merely  because  the  overwhelm- 
ing multitude  of  men  is  incapable  of  speculation.  Every  religion 
rather  is  based  on  facts,  false  religion  on  imaginary  ones,  true  re- 
ligion on  actual  ones,  and  such  were  wanting  to  speculation.  Then 
further  on  speculation  indeed  endeavors  to  give  an  answer  to  the 
three  main  interrogatories  which  human  kind  addresses  to  every  re- 
ligion: does  God  exist,  and  what  is  he?  how  is  man  relieved  of  his 
sin?  what  takes  place  with  man  after  death?  but  what  speculation 
says,  remains  speculation,  has  in  its  favor  neither  the  testimony  of 
conscience  nor  objective  facts.  On  this  account  speculation  never 
did  firmly  lodge  in  the  hearts  of  the  people,  had  no  puissance  to  over- 
come the  world,  but  was  split  up  into  philosophical  schools  and 
became  a  matter  of  erudition." 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS 

SOCRATES,  the  first  of  these  eminent  three,  is  often  said 
to  have  been  the  first  Athenian  philosopher.  But  as  a  phi- 
losopher he  does  not  primarily  concern  us  here.  The  bare- 
footed quizzer  of  his  townsmen  has  a  distinguished  place 
in  academic  tradition.  But,  really,  is  he  important  aca- 
demically only  ?  Do  we  consider  him  worthy  of  concern 
principally  because  in  the  series  of  efforts  of  human  cogi- 
tation his  precedent  and  stimulus  was  so  incisive  and  so 
far-reaching  ?  Or  would  he  not  deserve  our  earnest  good- 
will even  if  there  had  not  been  any  further  history  of  phi- 
losophy ?  Should  we  not,  in  all  spiritual  concerns,  firmly 
fix  our  attention  on  the  given  personality  without  any 
valuation  of  relative  weight  and  scale  ?  For,  unless  I  mis- 
take not,  he  urged  that  men  deeply  examine  themselves, 
that  in  all  action  they  proceed  on  the  basis  of  conceptions 
which  were  clear  and  consistent  and  productive  of  good 
and  adequate  results :  and  he  was  energetically  hostile  to 
mere  conceit  and  mere  opinion.  Like  Euripides  he  was 
of  somewhat  humble  birth,  his  father  being  a  carver  in 
marble,  his  mother  a  midwife.  He  was  born,  probably  in 
the  spring  of  469  B.C.  (eleven  years  after  Salamis),  when 
Thucydides  was  a  child  of  two  years,  Themistokles  had 
gone  into  exile,  to  Persia,  when  Anaxagoras,  so  eminent 
in  cosmic  speculation,  had  sojourned  at  Athens  some  eleven 
years,  and  was  then  thirty-one  years  of  age,  Herodotus 
was  fifteen,  Pindar  about  forty-nine,  ^Eschylus  fifty-six, 
Sophokles,  twenty-six,  and  Euripides,  eleven. 

Socrates  married  quite  late,  probably,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
deeply  impressed  by  the  enormous  losses  which  his  native 
commonwealth  had  suffered  in  the  ill-fated  expedition  to 
Sicily,  415-413.  His  oldest  son  is  called  a  pecpd/ciov 

210 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  211 

rakion)  in  399  when  the  child's  father  drank  the  hemlock, 
and  the  other  two  were  little  children :  the  older  then  on 
the  verge  of  puberty  :  a  young  lad  of  some  fourteen  or  so. 
His  wife  Xanthippe  clearly  was  a  dowerless  maid,  probably 
not  a  very  young  maid,  when  she  married  the  philosophical 
carver  in  marble.  In  a  word,  Socrates  was  a  bachelor  quite 
likely  until  he  was  well  past  his  fiftieth  year.  He  led  the 
simplest  life  as  far  as  food  and  dress  were  concerned,  and  a 
very  large  part  of  this  simple  life  was  given  up  to  clearing 
up,  first  for  himself,  what  thinking  and  what  knowledge 
really  were.  He  was  never  quite  satisfied  with  himself  in 
this  respect,  and  it  is  related  that  on  one  occasion  he  spent  a 
whole  night,  rooted  to  one  spot  under  the  open  sky,  pursu- 
ing one  great  train  of  reflection.  It  will  not  do  to  plaster  a 
convenient  modern  label  on  this  rare  man,  and  then  jaun- 
tily toss  him  aside  among  the  mere  mummies  of  Time,  as  if 
the  act  of  labelling  had  furnished  us  with  adequate  compre- 
hension or  valuation.  Absurd  to  label  him  a  "  rationalist " 
and  pass  on.  Absurd  to  drag  in  modern  words,  of  "  En- 
lightenment," of  a  " creed  of  authority,"  of  "Criticism,"  as 
though  familiar  modern  labels  involved  closeness  of  his- 
torical vision  and  furnished  real  insight  to  the  student  of 
Greek  culture. 

Socrates  was  not  made  in  one  day :  that  deep  and  pas- 
sionate pursuit  of  a  truth  obligatory  to  himself  and  oblig- 
atory to  all  who  were  willing  to  strive  for  the  real  and 
lasting  comprehension  of  act  and  action — I  say,  that  ever 
deepening  current  of  his  life  is  uncovered  to  us  when  it 
had  been  running  a  long  time,  and  of  its  sources  and  earlier 
eddies  we  know  nothing.  Socrates  deeply  felt  that  a  real 
insight  into  material  nature  and  into  the  mysteries  of  cos- 
mic unity  was  denied  to  man:  at  all  events,  the  one  thing 
needful  was  that  he  turn  to  himself,  not  in  the  furtherance 
of  comfort  and  wealth  indeed,  but  that  man  direct  himself 
to  his  real  concerns,  i.e.  to  the  question  of  right  thinking 
and  the  gaining  of  true  knowledge,  truly  human  concerns: 
for,  to  his  soul,  there  was  a  way  from  correct  thinking 
straight  to  correct  doing  and  acting, — a  way  categorical, 
absolute  and  mandatory  in  itself.  His  profound,  though 


212  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

noble  error,  seems  to  have  been  this,  that  whereas  appe- 
tite and  selfishness  pervert  or  ignore  moral  vision  in 
most  men,  he  fell  far  short  of  actual  human  kind  in  the 
belief  that  wrong  acting  and  all  sin  could  or  must  be 
reduced  to  faulty  judgment :  whereas  appetites,  emotions, 
and  the  infinite  manifestations  of  selfishness,  the  sombre 
account  in  human  experience,  cannot  in  any  fair  way  be 
reconciled  with  so  rational  a  conception  of  actual  and  his- 
torical man. 

But  we  must,  in  accord  with  the  general  aim  of  this  book, 
turn  to  some  decisive  data  of  classic  tradition.  Indeed, 
to  use  a  familiar  utterance  of  Cicero  ("  Tuscul.  Disput.," 
5, 10),  "  Socrates  was  the  first  to  call  the  pursuit  of  wisdom 
down  from  the  vaulted  firmament  and  to  place  it  in  com- 
monwealths and  to  open  the  homes  of  men  to  it  also,  and 
to  compel  it  to  make  enquiry  as  to  life  and  conduct  and 
good  and  evil  things." 

And  it  was  a  great  and  wonderful  thing  that  this  carver 
in  marble  and  this  ambulatory  disputant  emphasized  his 
great  theme,  viz.,  that  the  sold  is  very  precious,  among  a 
people  than  whom  no  other  ever  more  highly  prized  the 
comeliness  of  the  physical  person  and  the  beauty  of  this 
body  of  ours. 

And  it  was  to  such  youths,  often  to  those  endowed  and 
distinguished  by  comeliness  or  symmetrical  person  to 
whom  with  a  certain  preference  Socrates  directed  his 
nobler  efforts,  viz.,  to  rouse  them  to  deep  and  searching 
reflection  about  themselves  and  to  put  the  nobler  part  of 
themselves,  clear  understanding  and  refined  will,  in  the 
saddle.  Such  youths,  too,  were  Xenophon  and  Plato,  to 
whom  we  now  owe  most  of  what  we  know  of  Socrates. 
How  deeply  his  personality  sank  into  their  very  souls  is 
obvious  to  any  reader:  also,  that  this  wonderful  man 
arrested  minds  not  merely  different  and  diversified,  but 
such  also  as  were  antithetical  and  antagonistic ;  such,  e.g. 
as  Antisthenes  who  was  carried  away  by  the  wonderful 
simplicity  of  the  material  life  of  the  master,  and  by  the 
manner  in  which  his  strong  and  clear  soul  soared  high 
above  luxuries  and  softness  of  men :  whereas  Aristippos, 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  213 

founder  of  a  school  devoted  to  pleasure,  was  probably 
fascinated  by  the  equipoise  and  by  the  versatility  of  con- 
duct with  which  Socrates  faced  every  character  of  men 
and  every  situation  of  circumstance  :  for  his  was  a  serenity 
and  imperturbability  of  soul  which  induce  the  Stoics  long 
after  his  death,  to  canonize  and  enshrine  him  among  their 
particular  saints. 

I  have  mentioned  Xenophon.  An  anecdote  is  told  (by 
Diogenes  Laertius,  II,  48)  of  the  first  meeting  between 
these  two.  Now  young  Xenophon,  son  of  Gryllos,  of  the 
deme  of  Erchia,  was  both  very  fair  to  see  and  also  very 
modest.  And  Socrates,  they  say,  when  he  had  met  this 
youth  in  a  narrow  lane,  held  out  his  staff  and  blocked  the 
passage  and  asked  him  where  the  various  kinds  of  eatables 
could  be  bought.  And  when  the  youth  answered,  the 
other  one  asked  again  where  honorable  and  good  men 
were  turned  out ;  and  when  Xenophon  was  perplexed,  the 
friend  of  wisdom  said:  "Follow  me  then,  and  learn" 

We  may  with  all  sincerity  subscribe  to  the  general  re- 
port of  his  pupils,  that,  deep  as  was  in  Socrates  the  con- 
viction of  the  general  unwisdom  of  his  fellow-citizens,  it 
did  not  make  him  vain. 

The  well-informed  corporation  of  Delphi  had,  at  a  com- 
paratively early  stage  in  his  career,  named  him  as  the  wisest 
of  living  Greeks  to  his  fervent  disciple  Chairephon:  a 
compliment  which  Socrates  took  as  a  call  to  induce  his 
own  fellow-citizens  to  be  wise :  not  indeed  by  cramming 
rule  or  precept,  but  by  refining  their  own  consciousness 
to  the  point  of  absolutely  clear  and  firmly  held  concepts, 
concepts  gained,  not  indeed  for  the  purpose  of  vain  display 
or  dialectic  fencing,  but  as  the  guide  to  right  living  and 
correct  conduct.  So  he  became  convinced  (by  abstracting 
from  his  own  quite  extraordinary  personality,  mind  you) 
that  all  virtues  were  really  forms  of  wisdom.  "  Between 
(Xen.,  "Memorabilia,"  3,  9,  4,)  wisdom  and  sanity  of 
self-control  (sophrosyne)  he  made  no  distinction,  but  he 
judged  the  wise  and  the  temperate  man  by  this,  that,  rec- 
ognizing what  was  honorable  and  good,  he  availed  himself 
thereof  in  conduct,  and,  knowing  what  was  base,  he  was 


214  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

on  his  guard  against  such  things."  But  we  too  must  not 
be  abrupt  or  impatient,  and  cite  more  data  to  establish 
our  vision  of  Socrates.  Much  of  his  own  calm,  undoubt- 
edly, was  based  on  the  trenchant  character  of  his  own 
psychological  analysis.  "  Once  when  some  one  was  getting 
angry  because  his  greeting  had  not  been  returned,  he  said  : 
The  fact  that  you  would  not  become  angry  if  you  came 
across  some  one  who  was  worse  off  than  you  in  his  physical 
health,  but  that  you  should  be  vexed  because  you  fell  in 
with  one  whose  frame  of  soul  is  more  boorish  —  that  in- 
deed would  be  absurd"  ("Mem.,"  3,  13,  1).  We  may 
well  doubt  whether  the  getting  and  maintaining  of  so  serene 
and  true  a  vision  of  the  value  of  what  is,  and  transpires, 
within  us,  —  may  well  doubt,  I  say,  whether  such  a  desir- 
able frame  of  soul  is  attainable  to  many  men  as  a  product 
or  consummation  of  sheer  cogitation.  I  think  not.  By 
far  the  greater  number  of  actual  men  probably  must  sub- 
scribe to  the  familiar  confession  of  St.  Paul  (Romans  7, 
15) :  "  For  that  which  I  do,  I  allow  not :  for  what  I  would, 
that  do  I  not ;  but  what  I  hate,  that  do  I."  The  knowledge 
then,  which  played  so  great  a  r61e  in  the  system  and  mission 
of  Socrates  is  not  the  mere  appropriating  of  one  or  of  many 
items  of  data  :  the  rows  of  scales  of  a  fish,  or  the  orbit  of 
a  planet,  or  the  growth  of  a  plant :  no,  Socrates,  pro- 
foundly, I  believe,  held  that  such  lore  has  no  bearing 
whatever  on  the  human  soul,  that  it  is  really  irrelevant 
and  not  within  the  periphery  of  man's  true  concerns. 

But  let  us  hear  Xenophon  further:  "  For  also  just  as  he 
who  has  learned  to  play  the  lyre,  even  if  he  be  not  playing 
his  instrument,  is  still  a  lyre-player,  and  he  who  has  learnt 
the  art  of  healing,  even  if  he  do  not  perform  the  function 
of  a  physician,  still  is  a  physician,  thus  also  this  man  here 
from  this  time  on  will  go  on  being  a  general,  even  if  no- 
body elects  him  to  the  office.  But  he  who  has  not  the 
knowledge,  is  neither  general  nor  physician,  not  even  if 
he  be  elected  by  all  mankind"  (3,  1,  4).  A  condemna- 
tion of  the  ultra-democratic  methods  pursued  in  the  Attic 
commonwealth.  And  he  further  believed  that  the  best 
knowledge  should  be  acquired  through  a  process  of  rea- 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  215 

soning  (3,  3,  11).  He  utterly  disapproved,  in  plain  terms, 
the  choice  of  unfit  men,  without  real  knowledge  or  ex- 
perience for  many  governmental  posts:  for  "one  Athenian 
is  as  good  as  another,"  this  absurdity  was  as  clamorously 
asserted  there  as  in  some  modern  democracies. 

Little  doubt  that  much  of  the  practical  fervor  of  Socrates 
was  really  evoked  by  the  slipshod  modes  of  selecting  mag- 
istrates and  determining  fitness  by  lot  or  by  majorities. 
"  And  the  best  and  the  most  god-beloved  he  said,  in  the  do- 
main of  agriculture, were  those  who  performed  agricultural 
tasks  well,  and  in  the  domain  of  medicine  those  who  did 
medical  ones  best,  and  in  government,  those  who  transacted 
political  things  best:  and  of  him  who  did  nothing  well  he 
said  that  he  was  neither  useful  nor  god-beloved  "  (3,  9, 15). 

He  was  primarily  concerned  to  exert  a  moral,  rather 
than  a  technical,  influence  upon  those  who  sought  his  as- 
sociation :  sanity  of  self-control,  e.g.  (soplirosyne)  he  sought 
to  instil  in  them,  rather  than  oratory  or  the  faculty  of  dia- 
lectic controversy. 

Little  doubt,  too,  that  the  living  example  and  the  actual 
personality  of  the  man  was  as  potent  as  his  incisive  stirring 
up  of  reflection  and  his  bracing  the  will  of  his  pupils  to  ends 
which  were  felt  as  mandatory  by  their  understanding. 
Foremost  here  was  his  sexual  abstinence:  it  is  appalling 
and  it  is  awful  that  this  virtue,  dealing  altogether  with 
fair  boys  and  youths,  should  have  been  so  striking  in 
his  time  and  among  his  people.  The  growing  refinement 
of  Attic  culture  had  here  achieved  somewhat  less  than 
nothing,  had  reformed  nothing  whatsoever.  The  gymnasia 
(as  Plato  broadly  suggests  in  his  "  Laws ")  were  the 
sources  and  the  spheres  of  unspeakable — to  us  unspeak- 
able —  depravity :  in  the  times  of  Aristophanes  and 
Socrates  indeed  hardly  felt  by  most  Athenians  as  any 
particular  sin  or  fault,  when,  to  corrupt  or  to  be  corrupted, 
was  simply  the  times  in  which  we  live,  a  form  of  moral 
apology  which  youth  is  apt  to  put  forward  quite  seri- 
ously indeed  as  adequate  and  sufficient.  At  the  same 
time  (and  no  regard  for  his  great  qualities  must  induce 
us  to  ignore  or  to  palliate  this),  there  were  plain 


216  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

intimations  that  there  were  indeed  ways  and  means  to 
satisfy  such  appetite :  "  Just  as  adulterers  enter  into 
the  traps  (like  irrational  beasts)  knowing  there  is  a 
danger  for  the  adulterer  both  in  those  things  which  the 
statute  threatens  that  he  must  endure,  and  that  he  may 
be  taken  in  ambush  and  when  taken  be  subjected  to 
gross  indignities:  and  while  matters  as  great  as  these, 
both  evil  and  shameful  experiences,  are  established  for 
the  one  who  commits  adultery  and  while  there  are  many 
things  qualified  to  free  one  from  sexual  appetite,  still 
to  rush  into  danger  ..."  ("  Mem.,"  2,  1,  5)  —  really 
not  any  loftier  than  the  utilitarian  warnings  of  Horace 
in  the  second  Satire  of  the  first  book  —  and  he  a  pro- 
fessed Epicurean  and  man  of  the  world,  as  the  phrase 
goes.  And  elsewhere  Socrates  considers  matrimony  as 
chiefly  a  political  institution  and  for  the  getting  of 
children,  "  for  as  for  those  agencies  which  free  one  (from 
the  sexual  appetite)  the  streets  are  full  of  them  and 
the  oikemata  ('houses,'  Attic  euphemism  for  brothels) 
are  full  of  them  "  ("  Mem.,"  2,  2,  4).  It  is  recorded  on 
the  other  hand  that  he  incurred  the  bitter  ill-will  of  Kritias 
whom  he  chided  severely  for  the  pursuit  of  unnatural 
lust,  and  his  defiance  of  the  seductive  wickedness  of  that 
ancient  apostle  of  freedom,  Alcibiades,  has  very  often  been 
cited  (Plato,  "  Symposion,"  216  sqq.).  Socrates,  a  Silenus 
outwardly,  but  within  all  self-control  and  chastity :  he 
despises  comeliness,  he  rates  wealth  as  of  no  account :  his 
exterior  seemingly  without  serious  purpose,  his  inner  man 
profoundly  in  earnest  with  the  greatest  concerns. 

At  the  same  time  the  morality  of  Socrates  in  certain 
other  directions  differed  not  greatly  from  that  of  his  own 
time  and  people.  We  see  here  that  flaw  and  stain  in  the 
humanity  of  the  Hellenes  that  only  choice  and  exceptional 
souls  are  expected  to  rise  above  appetite  and  lower  im- 
pulse —  that  not  at  all  are  all  men  called  to  goodness,  but 
according  to  sex  and  age  and  circumstances  of  life,  there 
are  implied  and  conceded  laxities  of  conduct,  no  general 
law  of  goodness,  obligatory  and  mandatory  for  all.  And 
so  we  read  in  Xenophon  of  a  woman  of  the  courtesan 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  217 

class  "  who  gave  her  company  to  such  as  persuaded  her  " 
("Mem.,"  3,  11,  1  sqq.) ,  a  woman  whose  comeliness  was 
the  talk  of  the  town.  Socrates  also  and  his  followers 
went  to  see  her,  but  there  was  no  Mary  of  Magdala  here. 
There  is  not  the  slightest  intimation  of  the  admiring 
Xenophon  that  the  eminent  moralist  saw  in  her  any  ob- 
ject of  any  moral  concern  whatever.  Theodote  was  her 
name:  they  found  her  giving  a  sitting  to  a  painter,  to 
speak  precisely,  she  was  standing :  for  she  desired  that  her 
beauty  become  as  widely  known  as  possible.  It  was  a 
gorgeous  and  a  costly  household,  in  which  also  the 
woman's  mother  was  present. 

What,  then,  did  Socrates  discuss  there  ?  The  theory 
of  such  a  hetsera :  how  she  captured  and  held  her  friends; 
which  was  the  wisest  way,  wisest,  that  is,  with  a  view 
towards  material  ends  and  lasting  advantages :  how  to  look, 
to  converse,  to  sympathize,  how  to  deal  with  the  insolent 
suitor  —  in  a  word  how  to  please,  and  how  to  protract 
and  maintain  the  relation.  But  neither  emphasis  nor 
exegesis  is  here  further  required :  Aphrodite  was  one  of 
the  Olympian  gods,  and  mere  academic  speculation  rarely 
interfered  much  with  her  worship,  nor  will,  I  am  afraid. 
There  were  many  agalmata  or  statues  of  Aphrodite 
even  in  Athens. 

But  let  us  pass  on  to  Socrates,  the  religious  man.  If 
we  consider  how  little  call  on  heart  and  conscience  Greek 
religion  made,  it  was  not  very  difficult,  in  a  historical  and 
political  manner,  to  abide  by  usages  ancestral  and  estab- 
lished. And  this  Socrates  sincerely  desired  to  do.  Had 
he  been  a  hypocrite,  never  would  he  have  been  so  earnestly 
commended  in  all  his  ways  by  Xenophon.  For  this  dis- 
ciple was  one  who  took  no  important  step  without  con- 
sulting oracles,  then  selecting  the  god  who  might  favor 
a  project,  a  man  deeply  impressed  with  dreams  and  signs, 
but  not  a  man  to  be  held  cheaply  by  any  academic  person: 
a  man  was  he  who  in  grave  and  critical  emergencies  could 
remain  intrepid  and  cool:  no  academic  sneer  can  seriously 
belittle  the  very  large  elements  of  worth  in  his  public  and 
private  character:  it  is  a  very  small  performance  to  call 


218  TESTIMONIUM 

him  as  does  Wilamowitz  "  a  major  on  half-pay  " :  ridicule 
here  is  merely  the  twin-sister  of  sophistry,  muses  outside 
the  canonic  Nine,  muses,  these  two,  which  presume  on 
every  theme,  and  dispose  of  none.  Don't  you  think,  "  is 
it  not  altogether  palpable  to  you  ('Mem.,'  1,  4,  14)  that, 
compared  with  the  other  living  beings,  men  have  a  life 
like  the  gods,  being  eminent  in  their  nature  both  in  body 
and  soul?  "  One  could  often  see  Socrates  sacrificing  both 
at  home  and  at  the  common  Altars  of  Athens  (1,  1,  2). 
He  advocated  in  the  important  transactions  of  life  to 
ascertain  whether  the  gods  were  adverse  or  not  (2,  6,  8) ; 
specifically:  "where  we  are  unable  to  comprehend  in  ad- 
vance, what  is  advantageous  to  us,  in  concerns  of  the 
future,  at  this  point  (it  seems  altogether  likely  that)  they 
co-operate  with  us,  through  mantic  art  telling  those  who 
make  enquiries,  what  the  results  will  be,  and  teaching 
them  how  (these)  might  best  be  realized"  ("Mem.,"  4,  3, 
12) :  few  passages  in  Greek  letters  are  more  significant  than 
this  one.  "  No  one  ever  saw  Socrates  either  doing  any- 
thing irreverential  or  unholy,  or  saying  such"  ("Mem.," 
1,  1,  11).  For  it  is  virtually  impossible  for  us  who  live 
now  and  here,  in  the  United  States,  to  feel  to  the  full  how 
civil  and  religious  duties  were  all  but  coterminous  and 
convertible:  the  mutilation  of  almost  all  the  Hermse  in 
Athens,  in  a  single  night,  in  the  year  415  B.C.  not  only 
startled  but  shocked  the  entire  body  politic  of  Athens,  as 
though  a  veritable  earthquake  had  threatened  the  very 
substructure  of  the  commonwealth:  not  only  was  the 
occurrence  felt  as  an  evil  omen,  happening  as  it  did,  just 
before  the  date  set  for  the  departure  of  the  fleet  for  Sicily, 
but  it  seemed  also  to  be  a  project  of  a  conspiracy  to  over- 
throw the  extant  government,  and  to  bring  about  the  dis- 
solution of  the  democratic  polity  of  Athens  (Thucydides, 
6,  27). 

But  to  return:  it  would  seem  that  Socrates  in  referring 
to  the  gods  abstained  quite  uniformly,  and  I  am  sure  not 
without  conscious  design,  from  the  more  than  questionable 
and  vicious  legends  —  legends  which  were  indeed  part 
and  parcel  of  the  genealogical  pride  of  many  an  aristo- 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  219 

cratic  family :  he  was,  I  say,  silent  on  myths,  clearly  also 
because  he  strove  honestly  to  demean  himself  respectfully 
towards  the  Attic  religion.  The  greatest  things  in  human 
life,  he  claimed,  were  beyond  human  ken  and  human  skill: 
the  gods  reserved  such  things  for  themselves  —  for  the 
results  and  ultimate  consequences  of  all  human  enterprise 
really  were  beyond  the  determination  of  man  ("  Mem.,"  1, 
1,  8).  Clearly  Socrates  sought  to  conceive  the  "gods"  in  a 
loftier  way  than  the  actual  and  current  way:  "for  he 
held  that  gods  were  concerned  for  men  not  in  the  fashion 
in  which  the  general  public  hold:  for  these  think  that  the 
gods  know  some  things,  and  some  they  do  not  know;  but 
Socrates  held  that  the  gods  knew  all  things,  both  what 
was  said  and  what  was  done  and  what  was  deliberated  in 
silence  and  were  present  everywhere  and  made  significa- 
tion to  men  about  all  human  affairs  "  ("  Mem.,"  1,  1,  19). 
"  And  he  prayed  to  the  gods  simply  to  give  him  the  good, 
as  the  gods  best  knew  what  kind  of  things  were  good; 
but  those  who  prayed  for  gold  or  silver  or  for  the  power 
of  a  prince,  he  held,  prayed  for  something  that  differed  in 
nowise  from  throwing  dice  or  from  a  battle  .  .  ."("Mem.," 
1,  3,  2). 

The  argument  of  design  was  one  of  the  foremost  things 
in  his  soul — he  claimed  here  the  manifest  revelation  of  a 
divine  providence ;  e.g.  in  the  collaboration  of  the  human 
hands,  feet,  and  eyes  (2,  3,  19):  "And  he  who  arranges 
and  holds  together  the  entire  universe,  in  which  all  the 
fair  things  and  all  the  good  things  are,  and  whoever 
renders  the  universe  unworn  and  sound  and  unaging  to 
those  who  use  it,  and  performs  service  swifter  than  a 
thought  faultlessly,  he  is  perceived  in  his  performance  of 
the  greatest  things,  and  (at  the  same  time)  while  adminis- 
tering these  things  is  invisible  to  us"  ("Mem.,"  4,  3,  13). 
Little  indeed  did  that  soul  owe  to  books,  and  in  his  culture 
clearly  those  things  predominated  which  were  spiritually 
significant.  Libraries  as  yet  were  rare  (4,  2,  8).  Socrates 
himself  cited  Theognis,  Hesiod,  Epicharmos,  Sophokles: 
the  .^Esopean  fables  were  to  his  clear  utilitarian  vision  a 
veritable  affinity;  even  in  the  last  weeks  of  his  life  he 


220  TESTIMONIUM 

was  engaged  in  versifying  JEsop :  but  of  Homer  he  made 
by  far  the  largest  use.  And  still  we  may  assume  with 
great  confidence  that  the  gross  anthropomorphism  of  that 
most  widely  used  book  of  the  Greek  world  was  quietly 
ignored  by  him.  Plato,  we  will  see,  was  more  sensitive 
and  more  radical.  Pointing  once  more,  then,  to  the  great 
though  noble  error  of  Socrates  (viz.,  that  the  clear  insight 
of  the  intelligence  takes  sovereign  possession  also  of  will 
and  conduct),  let  us  go  a  little  further.  For  life  and 
death  are  much  greater  than  cogitation,  and  much  of  the 
spiritual  sincerity  and  earnestness  of  this  man  was  so 
revealed.  The  Stoics,  later,  never  forgot  to  tell  how  he 
defied  the  illegal  order  of  the  Thirty  Tyrants  (404  B.C.)  to 
be  one  of  a  number  who  were  to  arrest  Leon,  a  rich  man 
of  Salamis.  He,  however,  went  away  and  ignored  this 
utterly,  because  he  deemed  it  unrighteous  to  obey.  And 
as  he  there  withstood  the  oligarchy,  he  opposed  the  enraged 
democracy  with  no  less  firmness.  It  was  after  the  naval 
battle  of  the  Arginusian  isles,  406  B.C.,  when  the  treacher- 
ous cunning  of  the  Attic  enemies  of  Attic  democracy  was 
striving  to  drive  the  citizens  to  abrupt  and  illegal  meas- 
ures in  condemning  the  accused  generals  (Xen.,  "Hellen- 
ica,"  1,  7,  15).  On  this  memorable  occasion  all  the  other 
prytanes  were  intimidated  into  consent,  but  Socrates,  the 
son  of  Sophroniskos,  withstood  the  clamor  of  the  sovereign 
people. 

As  to  his  death,  we  cannot  here  do  a  foolish  thing. 
We  cannot  recount  the  catalogues  of  valuations  and  re- 
valuations. We  must  turn,  first,  to  the  commonwealth 
that  compelled  him  to  drink  the  statutory  hemlock. 
We  are  then  rudely  arrested  and  almost  shaken  and 
shocked  by  this  observation.  Much  and  incessantly  as 
he  labored  among  them,  the  Athenians,  as  a  whole,  really 
understood  him  not,  cared  not  enough  for  him  to  under- 
stand him.  It  is  demonstrable  that  at  least  a  quarter 
century  he  dwelt  and  strove  among  them,  and  but  a  little 
band  clustered  about  him,  and  loved  him  to  the  end  and 
forsook  him  not.  At  fifty- four,  as  I  write  these  lines, 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  221 

I  feel  the  shallow  obtuseness  and  the  stubborn  unright- 
eousness of  his  fellow-citizens  much  more  profoundly 
than  I  felt  at  twenty-one  the  worth  and  genius  of  the 
famous  victim. 

The  weak  coddling  directed  at  every  eminent  name 
in  letters  has  made  no  exception  of  Aristophanes.  The 
outrageous  and  deeply  mendacious  caricature  of  the 
"  Clouds  "  lies  before  us  —  clearly  no  melioration  of  the 
play  actually  given  in  423  B.C.  Socrates  is  charged 
with  idle  curiosity  about  astronomy,  with  teaching  so- 
phistical perversion  of  truth  for  pay,  cosmic  ideas  of 
Anaxagoras  are  credited  to  him,  he  denies  the  gods  of 
Athens,  he  subverts  all  moral  principle.  The  cocky 
youth  who  wrote  these  plays  posed  even  as  a  great  power 
for  good  and  a  reformer  :  academic  youth  (and  some- 
times academic  age)  takes  him  seriously.  But  if  it  was 
a  mere  harlequinade  it  was  also  a  serious  thing  for 
Socrates.  "  Ill-will  and  traducing "  clearly  did  their 
work  thoroughly :  it  was  really  impossible  for  Socrates 
at  his  trial  to  call  those  by  name  who  had  so  prejudiced 
public  opinion  again,  unless  it  was  Aristophanes  (Plato, 
"  Apology,"  18,  c).  This  long-established  ill-will,  rather 
than  the  indictment  of  the  petty  politicians  of  399  B.C., 
was  the  real  cause  of  his  condemnation. 

I  have  said  that  it  was  but  a  little  band  that  followed 
him  and  knew  him.  And  this  little  band,  in  the  main, 
consisted  of  men  who  were  well  born,  who  were  aristocratic 
indeed.  The  people  at  large  had  a  keen  dislike  to  reflect 
deeply  about  themselves  or  to  examine  their  motives  and 
design  in  conduct,  a  keen  dislike,  too,  to  have  their  self-love 
and  their  conceit  punctured  by  any  one.  Most  people 
lacked  leisure  even :  it  is  absurd,  therefore,  to  felicitate 
Athens  as  a  community  and  endow  it  with  a  fictitious  cult 
of  culture  which  spread  its  illumination  through  all  the 
strata  of  the  population.  Not  only  Socrates  thought  more 
highly  of  Sparta,  the  social  and  political  antithesis  of  Ath- 
ens, but  his  greatest  pupils  as  well.  After  the  death  of 
Socrates,  we  are  told  (Diog.  Laer.,  II,  43)  there  was  great 
remorse  among  the  citizens.  I  do  not  think  so.  The 


222  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

elaborate  book  of  Xenophon,  the  glowing  dialogue  of  Plato, 
prove  it  that  traducing  and  ill-will  were  still  active,  and 
that  the  master's  popular  image  was  but  a  miserable  cari- 
cature. As  for  his  daimonion,  what  was  it  ?  Clearly  a 
voice  to  him  of  power  transcendental  and  absolute  —  cate- 
gorical, if  you  like,  more,  a  good  deal  more,  than  mere 
practical  tact  as  to  those  things  which  he  must  avoid. 

Socrates  then,  in  facing  death,  soberly  and  gravely,  not 
in  a  rapture  of  enthusiasm,  but,  if  I  may  say  so,  with  su- 
preme intelligence  and  with  no  transcendental  consolation 
or  spiritual  support,  is  a  grave  figure.  We  can  readily 
subscribe  to  the  words  of  Grote :  cool  and  analytic  as  the 
English  Scholar  is,  special  pleader  too,  of  the  demos  as  the 
most  precious  constituent  of  human  polity,  Grote  still 
wrote  his  admirable  chapter  68  with  a  glow  and  a  lively 
feeling  rarely  met  with  in  his  sober  pages.  "  No  man  has 
ever  been  found  strong  enough  to  bend  his  bow;  much  less, 
sure  enough  to  use  it  as  he  did." 

It  is  significant  of  that  Greek  habit  excessive  and  all- 
pervasive  —  I  mean  the  valuation  of  comeliness  and  bodily 
excellence  —  it  is  significant,  I  say,  that  Socrates  compares 
himself  and  his  services  with  those  who  had  brought  great 
honor  on  the  commonwealth  by  victories  at  Olympia. 

A  more  incisive  denial  of  the  Greek  immersion  in  the 
bliss  of  the  mere  surface,  in  the  felicity  of  physical  nature, 
a  more  trenchant  negation,  also,  of  that  satisfaction  with 
outward  comeliness  and  with  this  transitory  world  of  sense 
and  seeming,  than  we  meet  in  the  words  and  work  of 
Socrates,  it  were  hard  to  conceive. 


And  still  the  aristocratic  youth  who  was  the  most  emi- 
nent of  the  followers  of  Socrates,  Plato,  in  a  certain  way, 
emphasized  still  more  this  denial.  Absent  as  he  had  to 
be  from  pallet  and  stone-flags  on  that  day  when  his  be- 
loved teacher  and  guide  drank  the  hemlock,  the  high- 
born and  highspirited  man  consecrated  himself  in  a 
measure  to  the  honor  of  that  soul. 

But  we  must  be  concise  here  and  make   an   election. 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  223 

We  must  bring  forward  a  few  great  features  in  Plato's 
utterance :  the  Idea  of  the  Good,  the  Immortality  of  the 
Soul,  his  theories  as  to  the  Regeneration  of  human  society. 

Early  in  his  intellectual  life  Plato  despaired  of  satis- 
fying his  soul  with  this  material  nature  of  sense  and 
seeming.  The  incessant  flux  of  the  physical  universe 
in  the  doctrine  of  Heraklitus,  had  made  a  deep  im- 
pression upon  him.  The  phenomena  of  matter  gave  him 
no  definite  basis  of  intellectual  and  rational  rest.  He 
ascended  to  a  world  of  "  Forms  "  —  strictly  that  is  the 
meaning  of  Eidos  and  Idea  —  :  a  world  eternal  and  before 
all  time,  of  which  the  actual  things  of  this  terrestrial 
life  and  sense-perception  are  but  copies ;  these  latter 
perish  and  pass  away,  while  the  other  world  is  eternal 
and  imperishable.  It  is  this,  which  is  the  true  object 
of  the  quest  of  the  soul  of  man,  and  among  all  possible 
occupations  of  man,  this  quest  is  the  highest.  Those 
men  who  give  their  life  and  striving  to  this  are  the 
foremost  men,  their  life  the  worthiest  and  most  precious 
of  all  lives.  It  was  the  felicity  of  the  most  perfect  soul, 
in  the  period  of  the  preexistence,  to  dwell  there  where 
this  essential  and  Eternal  being  could  be  viewed  and 
enjoyed  ("  Phaedrus,"  247,  c)  :  "For  that  being  which 
has  neither  color  nor  figure,  which  is  impalpable,  indeed 
— this  is  visible  for  the  mind  only,  the  pilot  of  the 
soul.  ..."  In  that  cosmic,  circular  movement  the 
soul  "  beholds  righteousness  itself,  it  beholds  self-control, 
it  beholds  knowledge,  not  that  which  is  associated  with 
the  production  of  organic  things  nor  one  which  differs 
in  the  different  individuals  on  whom  we  now  bestow 
the  appellation  of  beings,  but  the  knowledge  which  is 
in  that  which  has  essential  being  ..."  (ib.,  d). 

It  is  this  being  which  knows  neither  genesis  nor  de- 
struction, neither  increase  nor  diminution,  which  knows 
no  relativity  of  circumstances  or  time,  which  cannot  be 
comprehended  by  mere  subjective  opinion  ("  Symposion" 
211,  a).  The  objects  of  sense-perception  are  always  in  a 
stage  of  becoming,  they  never  are.  In  this  world  and  in 
this  life,  there  are  many  individuals  with  an  identity  of 


224  TESTIMOXIUM  ANIM43 

form,  but  only  one  genus  or  Idea.  Now  the  craftsman 
(jdemiurgoi)  fashions  in  accordance  with  the  idea,  while 
he  does  not  create  the  idea  itself.  "  For  this  same  crafts- 
man is  not  only  competent  to  make  all  utensils,  but  also 
all  the  things  which  grow  from  the  earth  does  he  make, 
and  all  animated  beings  are  wrought  by  him,  both  the  others 
and  he  himself;  and,  in  addition  to  these,  heaven  and 
earth  and  gods  and  all  the  things  that  are  in  heaven  and 
those  in  Hades  below  the  earth,  all  are  wrought  by  him  " 
("  Republic,"  596,  c). 

Plato  feels  and  freely  admits,  that,  in  extolling  Mind 
and  Intelligence  in  their  view  and  vision  of  the  Universe, 
philosophers  really  magnify  themselves  and  their  office : 
and  that  therein  they  are  in  harmony  ("  Philebos,"  28,  c). 
And  we  have  ample  warrant  both  here  and  elsewhere  for 
believing  that  he  withheld  the  name  of  philosopher  from 
those,  who  like  Demokritos,  were  content  with  mechanical 
and  material  causes,  and  an  accidental  aggregation  of 
atoms  which  somehow  passed  into  organic  and  self -repro- 
ducing forms.  He  goes  on  ($.,  28,  d)  :  "  Shall  we,  Pro- 
tarchos,  say  that  all  things  and  this  so-called  Universe  have 
for  their  guardian  the  force  of  that  which  is  irrational  and 
proceeds  at  random  and  as  chance  had  it,  or,  quite  the 
opposite,  just  as  those  before  us  (Anaxagoras  ?)  said  that 
a  kind  of  Mind  and  Intelligence  of  wonderful  nature 
composed  and  piloted  it ?"  (soil,  the  Universe).  "  Pro- 
tarchos  .  .  . :  The  statement  indeed  which  you  now  make 
does  not  even  appear  to  me  to  be  compatible  with  reli- 
gious respect  (o<noz>)  ;  but  to  say  that  Mind  arranged  them 
all  in  orderly  fashion  is  postulated  also  by  the  sight  of 
the  Universe  and  of  sun  and  moon  and  stars  and  all  the 
circular  movement,  and  not  in  any  other  way  would  I 
ever  speak  or  opine  about  them.  .  .  ." 

"  What  we  have  often  said,  Infinity  is  in  the  Universe 
in  abundance,  and  the  Infinite  also,  in  goodly  measure, 
and  there  is  associated  with  them  a  Cause  of  no  mean 
character,  arranging  and  composing  years  and  seasons 
and  months,  a  cause  which  most  properly  might  be  desig- 
nated as  Wisdom  and  Intelligence"  ($.,  30,  c). 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  225 

The  hard  problem  was  presented  to  Plato's  soul,  to 
understand  how  omnipotence  and  goodness  could  be  con- 
ceived as  being  consistent  with  the  actual  sin  and  evil  in 
the  world.  And  as  for  the  essential  goodness  of  God,  he 
maintained  it  with  categorical  affirmation.  The  Homeric 
myths  of  rancor  and  lust  and  other  foibles  of  the  Olym- 
pians found  no  mercy  before  his  eyes  or  abode  in  his  re- 
generated political  society  ("Republic,"  2,  378,  c  sqq.^), 
a  matter  to  which  we  have  adverted  in  a  previous  chapter. 
Poets  in  the  new  commonwealth  then  must  speak  of  God 
as  essentially  good,  and  as  harmful  in  no  respect  what- 
ever, as  causing  no  evil,  but  as  causing  good  only. 

"  Not  then  (379,  c)  is  God,  since  he  is  good,  the  cause 
of  all  things,  as  the  many  say,  but  of  few  things  is  he  the 
cause  for  mankind,  and  of  many  not  the  cause ;  for  much 
fewer  are  the  goods  than  the  evils;  and  of  the  goods 
none  other  must  be  made  the  cause,  but  for  evils  divers 
other  things  must  be  sought  for  as  causes,  but  not  God  " 
(ib.,  379,  c).  Clinging  as  he  does  to  his  purer  and 
nobler  idea  of  a  potent  and  governing  divinity,  active  in 
life  and  world,  but  in  no  wise  identical  with  it,  Plato 
cannot  fairly  be  called  a  Pantheist.  And  as  to  the  new 
life  and  reproduction  of  forms  in  this  Nature  which  we 
see,  he  claims  that  "through  the  handicraftsmanship  of 
God  (6eov  BijfjLiovpyovvro^  they  became  later  when  for- 
merly they  existed  not  .  .  ."  ("  Sophista,"  365,  c),  and  he 
regrets  the  tenet  (Soy pa)  of  the  many,  "that  Nature 
begot  them  from  some  automatic  cause  and  one  which 
caused  growth  without  intelligence,"  but  holds  that  they 
came  from  a  cause  "  originating  with  God,  a  cause  associ- 
ated with  reason  and  divine  knowledge."  And  further 
and  even  more  eloquently  does  he  claim  the  divine  con- 
cern and  providence  as  directed  at  man  —  and  here  he 
ascends  to  noble  heights  not  attained  in  the  Hellenic 
world  before  him,  I  believe.  For  on  the  whole,  the  out- 
ward and  material  prosperity  was  sincerely  viewed  as  the 
palpable  and  unmistakable  standard  of  divine  favor  —  the 
rich,  the  strong,  the  comely  were  admittedly  god-beloved. 
But  the  pupil  of  that  Socrates  who  drank  the  hemlock 


226  TESTIMONIUM  ANIALE 

could  not  very  well  satisfy  his  soul  and  mind  with  this 
doctrine,  popular  though  it  was,  and  deeply  lodged  in  the 
very  fibre  of  Greek  conviction.  Is  it  well  with  the  soul, 
the  primary  part  of  man  ?  —  this  was  to  Plato  the  crite- 
rion of  life  and  happiness.  Speaking  of  the  righteous  and 
the  unrighteous  man,  Plato  says  in  his  noblest  and  most 
comprehensive  work,  the  "  Republic  "  (10,  612,  e  «<?.)  : 
"  Therefore  first  you  will  grant  this,  that  each  of  them 
does  not  escape  the  notice  of  the  gods,  as  to  what  kind  of 
a  man  he  is?  We  will  grant  it,  said  he.  And  if  they  do 
not  escape  their  attention,  the  one  would  be  god-beloved, 
and  the  other  god-hated,  just  as  we  agreed  in  the  begin- 
ning. That  is  so.  Will  we  not  agree,  that  to  the  god- 
beloved  one,  whatever  comes  from  the  gods,  all  happen  as 
well  as  possible,  unless  some  evil  necessarily  belonged  to 
him  from  some  former  sin  ?  By  all  means.  Thus  then 
must  we  assume  concerning  the  righteous  man,  if  he  pass 
into  poverty  or  if  into  diseases  or  into  any  other  of  the 
apparent  evils,  that,  for  this  one  (i.e.  the  righteous  man) 
these  things  will  terminate  in  some  good  during  his  life  or 
after  his  death.  For  not  is  he  ever  neglected  by  the  gods 
whoever  wishes  to  become  righteous,  and  in  the  pursuit  of 
virtue,  as  far  as  is  possible,  to  assimilate  himself  to  God." 
And  this,  too,  Plato  maintained  in  the  work  of  his  old 
age,  the  "  Laws  "  (899,  d),  where  likewise  he  refuses  to 
honor  the  popular  standard  of  outward  and  material  pros- 
perity. "  But  him  who  holds  that  there  are  gods,  but  that 
they  have  no  concern  for  human  affairs,  one  must  admon- 
ish. My  good  man,  let  us  say,  that  you  believe  that  gods 
are,  perhaps  a  certain  divine  kinship  leads  you  to  honor 
that  which  is  of  common  origin  with  yourself  and  to  believe 
that  it  exists ;  but  the  fortunes  of  evil  and  unrighteous 
men  privately  and  publicly,  these  are  not  in  reality  happy, 
but  vaunted  as  happy  in  opinions,  strongly  but  not  consis- 
tently do  they  lead  you  towards  impiety,  not  rightly 
chanted  both  in  poetry  and  in  all  kind  of  accounts.  ..." 
And  so,  too,  Plato  entertained  a  keen  repugnance  against 
the  doctrine  of  the  subjective,  the  much-cited  dictum  of 
Protagoras,  that  man  is  the  measure  of  all  things.  "  What 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  227 

deed  then  is  dear  to  God  and  follows  in  his  footsteps  ?  .  .  . 
God  indeed  for  us  would  most  be  the  measure  of  all  things, 
and  much  more  so,  than  I  dare  say  any  particular  man,  as 
they  say.  It  is  necessary  therefore  that  he  who  is  to  be- 
come beloved  to  such  a  one  as  much  as  possible,  that  he 
even  himself  must  become  such  a  one,  and  by  this  rational 
postulate  the  man  of  self-control  among  us  is  dear  to  God, 
for  he  resembles  him,  and  he  who  has  no  self-control  is 
unlike  him,  and  different  and  unrighteous  ..."  ("Laws," 
716,  c-d).  

The  highest  thing  in  the  Platonic  world  is  the  Idea  of 
the  Good.  This  furnishes  truth  and  gives  the  faculty  of 
understanding  to  him  who  understands.  It  is,  indeed,  the 
cause  of  truth  in  us. 

The  sun  is  indeed  not  our  vision,  but  still,  among  our 
senses,  sight  is  most  helioform  ("Rep.,"  508,  a)  — sun-like  : 
withdraw  the  orb  of  day  and  all  objects  are  dark ;  so  too 
the  Idea  of  the  Good  is  as  the  sun  to  soul  and  mind.  But 
life  and  growth  does  the  sun  furnish  to  our  material  world  : 
likewise  Being  and  Substance  come  from  the  Idea  of  the 
Good.  "  God,  desiring  all  things  to  be  good,  but  nothing 
to  be  bad  as  far  as  possible  (/cara  Svvafuv^),  thus  then  tak- 
ing in  hand  all  whatsoever  that  was  visible  as  not  main- 
taining rest,  but  being  moved  in  an  unharmonious  and 
disorderly  fashion,  brought  it  into  order  out  of  disorder, 
thinking  that  the  former  was  altogether  better  than  the 
latter. 

"  And  it  neither  was  nor  is  right  for  the  Best  to  do  aught 
but  the  fairest.  .  .  .  On  account  of  this  computation 
then  composing  Intelligence  in  Soul,  and  Soul  in  Body,  he 
kept  construing  the  Universe,  having  now  wrought  it 
completely  that  it  might  be  the  fairest  and  best  possible 
work  within  the  capacity  of  Nature  "  ("  Timseus,"  30,  a-b). 
"  Thus  then  in  accord  with  plausible  reasoning  must  we 
say  that  this  Universe  has  become  a  living  being  endowed 
with  Soul,  endowed  with  intelligence,  in  truth,  on  account 
of  the  forethought  of  God"  (ib.,  b). 

The  motive  of  creation :  "  Let  us  say  for  what  cause  the 


228  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

composer  composed  birth  and  this  Universe.  He  was 
good,  and  in  the  good  there  is  bred  no  envy  at  any  time 
about  anything  whatever  .  .  ."  ("Tim.,"  29,  d).  This 
same  book,  his  "  Timaeus,"  the  philosopher  closes  with  a 
survey  of  orders  of  animals,  a  scale  and  hierarchy  of  being, 
birds  of  the  air,  quadrupeds  of  soil  and  earth,  and  those 
animals  still  lower  which  crawl  and  creep,  and  still  more 
inferior,  the  fishes,  and  crustaceans.  "And  now  indeed 
let  us  say  that  our  discourse  of  the  Universe  has  a  conclu- 
sion :  for  this  Universal  order  (/coV/io?)  having  taken 
mortal  and  immortal  beings  and  having  been  completed, 
a  visible  Being  comprehending  (containing)  the  visible 
things,  a  divinity  perceptible  by  the  senses,  image  of  that 
deity  which  is  perceptible  by  the  intelligence,  has  come  to 
be  greatest  and  best,  fairest  and  most  perfect,  one  heaven 
this  one,  being  only-begotten." 

As  for  evil,  or  to  be  more  exact,  evils.  These  "  cannot 
perish;  for  they  must  needs  always  be  the  antithesis  of 
the  good.  Nor  can  they  find  settlement  among  the  gods; 
but  they  traverse  mortal  nature  and  this  space,  from  ne- 
cessity. Therefore  also  we  ought  to  try  to  flee  from  here 
thitherward  as  quickly  as  possible.  And  flight  is  an  as- 
similation to  God  as  far  as  possible.  And  it  is  right  and 
holy  that  the  assimilation  be  accomplished  with  intelli- 
gence" ("  Thesetetus,"  176,  a-b).  He  abominates  the 
shallow  moralizing  of  the  practical  politician,  who  actually 
rejoices  in  the  reproach  of  cunning  (zi.,  176,  d).  "From 
their  stupidity  and  from  their  utter  lack  of  perception, 
they,  without  being  aware  of  it,  are  assimilated  to  ungod- 
liness (practical  atheism,  rov  a#e'ov),  assimilated  on  ac- 
count of  their  unrighteous  deeds,  and  also  become  unlike 
the  other  (the  divine).  Thereof  they  pay  the  penalty  in 
this,  that  they  live  the  life  resembling  that  to  which  they 
are  assimilated;  and  if  we  say  that  unless  they  cut  loose 
from  their  particular  puissance,  even  after  death  that  place 
clean  of  evils  will  not  receive  them,  and  here  they  will  always 
have  a  resemblance  in  their  conduct  consistent  with  them- 
selves, evil  men  associating  with  evil  men  .  .  ."  (ib.,  176,  e 
«g.).  And  the  statute  of  local  utility,  adopted  by  some 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  229 

particular  commonwealth,  is  but  rarely  related  at  all  to 
the  idea  of  the  Good.  For  the  former  in  the  main  deter- 
mined the  practical  conduct  and  morality  of  most  Greeks. 
Now  all  utility-statutes  are  determined  by  a  regard  for 
the  future,  we  anticipate  practical  advantages.  And  here 
again  we  see  the  poet-philosopher's  deep  antipathy  for  the 
subjectivism  of  the  Protagorean  dictum,  viz.,  that  man  is 
the  measure  of  all  things  (ib.  178,  b).  As  to  physical 
perception,  this  may  indeed  be  so:  what  impression  on 
him  is  made  by  white,  by  light,  by  heavy  objects ;  on  these 
he  may  base  his  own  belief  of  such  forms  of  truth,  having 
indeed  the  criterium  within  himself,  but  has  he  that  device 
of  determination  within  himself  also  as  regards  the  future  ? 
Anticipations  and  judgments  there  may  widely  differ,  but 
the  actual  result  will  only  be  one  and  of  one  kind. 


Even  in  this  brief  survey  we  see  continually  the  tenet 
of  the  primacy  of  the  soul,  and  of  its  supremacy  in  the 
hierarchy  of  being  due  to  its  essential  resemblance  as  to 
its  source  and  as  to  its  aim,  to  God  :  —  to  whom  also  led 
the  call  and  path  of  the  soul  as  to  conduct,  so  that  right- 
eousness creates  likeness  to  him,  and  sin  unlikeness  to  him. 
For  the  soul  is  the  imperishable  within  the  perishable 
body.  To  get  at  Plato's  deep  conviction  here,  we  must  re- 
member that  he  fully  assumed  the  doctrines  of  Pythagoras 
and  of  his  followers  in  Italy  and  Sicily  whom  he  visited 
and  with  whose  noblest  possessions  he  became  closely 
acquainted.  We  must,  then,  speak,  not  so  much  of  an 
immortality  of  the  soul,  but  rather  of  an  eternity  of  the 
same  both  of  past  and  of  future. 

In  Plato's  literary  style  there  is  a  characteristic  blend- 
ing of  the  simple  and  of  the  noble,  of  the  candidly  urgent 
and  earnest  tone,  coupled  with  a  certain  majesty.  And 
this  strain  in  his  innermost  fibre  often  finds  expression  in 
simile,  in  myth,  in  allegory  —  as  though  intuition  on  strong 
pinions  soared  to  altitudes  beyond  the  ken  of  sense  and 
seeming,  and  beyond  this  little  experience  of  our  life  and 
our  world. 


230  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

Thus,  too,  Plato  delineates  the  source  and  composition 
of  the  soul  in  a  famous  passage  in  the  "  Phaedrus "  (245, 
c  sqq.}. 

The  soul  —  every  soul — is  immortal,  because  self-moved, 
self-determined,  not  receiving  life  from  any  source  out- 
side of  itself;  whatever  is  moved  or  stirred  by  another, 
experiences  sometime  a  cessation  of  movements,  or 
life. 

Now  this,  which  is  life  and  movement  in  itself,  as  an 
immanent  property,  must  be  uncreated,  from  eternity. 
And  since  non-created,  this  soul-substance  must  also  be 
incorruptible.  This  then  is  the  rational  theory  (\dyos') 
of  the  soul,  and  the  principle  of  animation. 

As  to  the  form  or  shape  of  the  soul,  Plato  goes  on  to 
compare  it  to  a  winged  span  of  steeds  and  a  charioteer. 
It  is  the  latter,  then,  who  symbolizes  the  dominant  element 
in  the  soul.  Of  the  steeds,  one  is  noble  and  obedient 
to  the  reins,  the  other  vicious,  balky,  and  hard  to 
manage. 

In  its  preexistence,  then,  the  soul  is  winged,  so  to  speak, 
and,  traversing  the  highest  altitudes,  —  i.e.  feeding  itself 
with  the  noblest  concerns  of  its  nature,  non-material  truth, 
Ideas :  traverses  and  dwells  within  the  entire  universe : 
but  that  soul  which  has  shed  its  plumage  sinks  downward  : 
in  short,  incarnation  in  some  body  follows :  it  enters  into 
a  casement  of  clay.  A  compound  being  thus  presents 
itself  to  our  gaze,  called  mortal,  though  that  pertains  to 
the  body  only. 

Why  did  the  soul  lose  its  plumage?  The  vicious  steed 
is  at  fault  interfering  with  the  calm  and  perfect  gaze  of 
the  charioteer  —  the  soul  cannot  permanently  maintain 
itself  in  that  perfect  existence  of  the  contemplation  of 
absolute  and  immutable  truth :  in  short,  some  form  of 
incarnation  follows.  And  this  birth  itself  is  determined 
by  the  amount  of  ideal  vision  gained  by  the  particular 
soul  in  that  primal  state  of  being :  and  Plato  at  once  re- 
veals his  own  scale  of  human  valuation.  The  highest  in- 
carnation that  of  the  philosopher :  then  follow  in  rank  and 
order  the  constitutional  king,  the  man  active  in  public 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  231 

life,  administrator  or  banker,  next  comes  the  hardy  athlete 
and  the  physician,  the  fifth  rank  is  held  by  soothsayer 
and  the  man  active  in  mysteries  of  religious  initiation, 
then  comes  the  poet  or  other  devotee  of  reproductive  art, 
further  on  the  farmer  and  craftsman,  followed  by  the 
sophist  and  popular  politician,  and  lowest  and  last  is  the 
tyrant  or  autocrat  that  knows  no  limitations  of  law.  Now 
divine  retribution  operates  in  such  a  way,  that  in  the  next 
incarnation  the  righteous  receives  a  better  lot,  that  is,  we 
may  understand,  a  nobler  character :  the  unjust,  a  worse. 

Favored  is  the  soul  of  him  who  loved  wisdom  with 
sincerity  :  he,  after  three  thousand  years,  if  thrice  in 
succession  he  chose  this  life,  is  blessed  with  the  original 
plumage,  i.e.  he  passes  into  that  divine  contemplation 
of  the  world  of  Ideas.  "  But  the  other  souls  (249,  a  sq.), 
when  they  have  completed  the  first  life,  get  their  judg- 
ment, and  having  received  their  verdict  some  pass  into 
the  places  under  earth  where  justice  is  executed  and 
there  they  pay  the  penalty  (&6np*  e/cri'vovo-iv'),  and  the 
others  are  raised  by  Justice  into  a  certain  locality  of 
the  heavens  and  lead  a  life  worthy  of  that  life  which 
they  lived  in  human  shape."  After  a  thousand  years 
new  incarnations  are  allotted  —  even  of  animals,  or  of 
animals  ascending  to  human  incarnation.  Pythagoras, 
indeed. 

Much  later  than  the  "  Phsedrus,"  Plato  wrote  his  "  Re- 
public," —  which  carries  man  from  birth  to  the  Last 
Things,  —  though  here,  too,  is  the  grave  ring  of  Eternity 
—  no  Rest,  no  final  and  definite  Consummation.  A  myth 
in  form,  and  still  a  postulate  of  the  human  soul. 

An  Armenian,  Er  by  name  ("Rep.,"  614,  b),  who  was 
among  the  corpses  of  a  battlefield  and  on  the  twelfth 
day  even  laid  on  the  funeral  pyre,  recovered  life  and 
consciousness. 

He  told  of  what  his  soul  had  seen  :  two  passages  be- 
low, two  to  heaven  ;  judges  marking  and  sending  souls, 
the  righteous  to  the  right,  upward,  the  unjust  to  the  left, 
downward. 

Some  came  up  from  the  Earth  shrivelled  and  dust-covered, 


232  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

others  came  down  from  heaven,  clean  and  pure,  the  ones 
from  great  suffering  and  tribulation,  the  others  from  inef- 
fable bliss  and  glory  —  both  periods  of  time  having  been 
for  a  thousand  years  —  a  tenfold  retribution  or  reward. 
One  particular  tyrant  was  condemned  to  unending  tribu- 
lation (615,  d).  Such  souls  Plato  conceived  as  being 
incurable.  The  Platonic  vision  of  Bliss  I  cannot  present 
in  any  detail  —  the  movement  of  spheres  and  their  celes- 
tial harmony.  Practically,  this  heaven  is  only  a  tem- 
porary abode,  where  eventually  the  souls  were  to  choose 
new  lots  of  life  :  and  this  act  of  choice  indeed  was  the 
great  issue  and  the  concern  of  concerns.  For  the  new 
Lives  were  taken  by  each  soul  from  the  lap  of  Lachesis, 
daughter  of  Necessity.  "For  responsibility  was  of  him 
who  chose.  God  was  without  responsibility  "  (617,  e). 

The  great  and  grave  thing,  then,  in  this  our  present 
life  on  earth,  is  to  gain  a  faculty  of  judgment,  a  true  vision 
of  the  moral  bearings,  of  the  final  achievements  and  at- 
tainments of  the  things  sought  and  prized,  of  comeliness, 
wealth,  poverty,  noble  birth  or  mean  birth,  high  office  or 
private  station,  physical  brawn  or  feebleness,  not  indeed 
in  themselves,  "  but  coupled  with  what  kind  of  attitude  of 
soul  (/iera  Trota?  nvbs  T/TU^?  l^eeo?)  they  be."  Let  us  note, 
then,  that  not  until  we  come  to  Socrates,  and  indeed,  in 
the  highest  degree,  not  until  we  come  to  Plato  do  we 
recognize  a  distinctly  and  expressedly  spiritual  scale  of 
valuation,  to  which  all  the  current  objects  of  men's 
striving  are  subjected.  We  meet  it  late,  but  we  meet 
it.  Such  felicity  is  not  indeed  a  worldly  felicity,  it  is 
not  of  this  world,  nor  is  there  any  infelicity  of  things, 
but  of  the  soul  alone. 


In  the  glimpse  which  we  may  take  at  the  ideas  of  social 
regeneration  such  as  Plato  cherished  and  uttered,  we  will 
be  met  by  some  startling  and  some  puzzling  things. 

In  his  ideal  state  Plato  establishes  an  aristocracy  :  not 
indeed  one  in  which  birth  and  wealth  endow  a  given 
class  with  political  preeminence.  In  the  human  soul 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  233 

dominant  intelligence,  normally,  should  be  sovereign,  while 
the  Will  and  that  more  vicious  steed,  Concupiscence  and 
all  other  craving  for  pleasure,  are  equally  subject  to  reins 
and  whip  of  the  charioteer.  So  Plato  would  build  his 
political  society,  and  construct  a  system  in  which  Justice 
should  rule,  nay  in  which  that  noble  virtue  should  be  the 
very  essence  of  the  whole  structure.  His  state  indeed  is 
Justice  writ  large.  And  first  and  foremost  we  observe 
that  Plato  at  the  outset  abandons  the  effort  to  place  all 
citizens  on  a  level,  to  value  or  rate  them  alike.  It  is  after 
all  the  magnifying  of  his  personal  ideals  when  he  allots  to 
the  friends  of  wisdom  the  specific  duty  and  privilege  of 
administration,  as  though  they  were,  among  men  and  in 
the  body  politic,  the  rational  element,  reason  socially  in- 
carnate. It  is  just  that  they  should  rule. 

There  is  a  second  class  who  are  the  "  defenders,"  en- 
dowed with  courage  above  their  fellows,  and  who  force 
the  execution  of  all  decrees  issuing  from  the  ruling  class. 
The  maintenance  of  order  at  home,  of  the  state's  integ- 
rity in  foreign  concerns,  police  and  the  military  estab- 
lishment—  these  are  their  peculiar  spheres  of  service. 
Guardians,  Custodians,  (<£v\a/ce9)  Plato  calls  the  former, 
assistants,  these  latter  ones.  And  further  it  is  these,  who 
are  to  be  the  nursery  of  the  first  class,  their  ablest  and 
most  promising  members  are  to  advance  and  become  rulers, 
after  fifty.  The  third  class,  by  far  the  most  numerous,  is 
made  up  of  those  who  merely  crave  and  covet  pleasure  and 
profit.  Their  dominant  element  is  the  striving  after  material 
things,  they  accumulate  wealth,  pursue  some  craft  or  trade. 
Plato  with  his  radical  anti-Hellenic  depreciation  of  the 
body  and  of  the  surface  of  all  material  things,  has  even 
gone  so  far  as  to  place  the  physician  in  this  lowest 
stratum,  nor,  with  his  elevation  of  absolute  truth  does  he 
assign  a  high  rank  to  reproductive  art  which  is  fashioned 
after  those  things  which  are  perishable,  transitory,  and  have 
no  relation  to-  absolute  truth.  As  he  reprobates  the  domi- 
nation of  passion  in  the  human  soul,  he  would  clearly  have 
made  short  shrift  in  his  commonwealth  in  dealing  not  only 
with  an  Archilochos  and  an  Anacreon,  but  no  less  with 


234  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

the  verse  of  Alkaios,  and  Sappho,  where  the  lower  and 
more  vicious  steed  sways  and  turns  from  its  proper  course 
the  chariot  of  the  soul.  There  are  indeed  ethnic  limita- 
tions even  in  this,  the  most  gifted  son  of  Attica's  wonder- 
ful soil,  there  are  such  limitations,  but  no  Greek  soul 
strove  more  nobly,  none  has  gained  a  greater  claim  upon 
the  ear  of  the  world,  none  was  so  nearly  free  from  the  in- 
crustation of  practical  paganism,  none  so  little  warped  and 
dwarfed  by  the  vicious  elements  of  Hellenic  life  and  living. 
How  vast  a  portion  of  modern  literature  and  art  bound  up 
with  giving  rein  to  the  more  vicious  steed  of  the  chariot 
of  the  soul,  and  devoted,  simply,  to  the  emancipation  of 
the  flesh,  would  have  been  banished  from  his  state ! 
How  often  do  the  stencil-plated  formularies  of  culture- 
phrase,  to-day,  like  a  whitened  sepulchre,  enshrine  ordure 
and  rotting  carcasses  under  the  inscription  of  Art  and  the 
absolute  right  of  sesthetical  postulates  !  Man  is  always 
one  in  the  innermost  essence  of  his  being,  no  matter  what 
academic  discrimination  and  psychological  map-drawing 
may  pretend  to  have  achieved.  There  is  indeed  no  way 
of  yielding  equal  rein  to  the  two  steeds  of  the  soul. 


In  one  way  Plato's  ideal  State  involves  the  poet-phi- 
losopher's utter  rejection  and  condemnation  of  the  Attic 
democracy.  That  government  had  put  to  death  Plato's 
beloved  master ;  it  Yield  in  reprobation  the  thirty  tyrants 
and  their  leader,  Plato's  aristocratic  kinsman  Kritias. 
And  with  burning  indignation  he  scorned  the  current 
doctrine  of  the  practical  politician  of  his  day  that  the 
demos  can  do  no  wrong.  Evidently  the  cultural  influ- 
ence enjoyed  by  that  demos,  from  the  bema  of  the  highly 
trained  orator,  or  from  the  stage  of  Dionysos,  was  vapor- 
ous at  best,  slight  and  elusive :  I  am  not  ecstatic  on  this 
score :  clearly  the  fellow- Athenians  who  judged  of  their 
own  demos  were  not :  not  Euripides,  not  Aristophanes, 
not  Thucydides,  not  Socrates,  not  Plato,  not  Xenophon, 
not  Demosthenes,  nor  the  great  critic  from  abroad,  Aris- 
totle. First  and  foremost,  then,  the  demos  (people,  plebs) 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  235 

is  not  fit  to  govern,  for  the  multitude  is  swayed  merely 
by  pleasure  and  pain.  Only  when  subordinate  to  those 
who  know,  is  it  well  placed.  It  is  right  ("  Leges,"  690,  a) 
that  the  Noble  should  rule  the  Ignoble,  the  Reflecting  the 
Ignorant. 

It  is  immaterial  to  us  how  much  there  was  in  Plato's 
soul  of  a  deeper  affinity  for  Doric  and  particularly  for 
Spartan  institutions. 

The  main  point  is  that  he  considers  the  multitude  and 
mass  in  civil  society  as  gross  and  beyond  the  concern  or 
range  of  any  genuine  uplift.  Let  them  fill  their  bellies, 
make  money  and  obey  the  Guardians,  i.e.  the  ruling  philo- 
sophical class.  Both  these  and  their  military  and  order- 
keeping  assistants  (eTrwcou/aot)  shall  live  exclusively  so  as 
to  maintain  their  kind,  that  is,  their  superiority  of  breed, 
character,  and  ruling  intelligence.  To  this  end,  and  for 
these  two  small  classes  alone,  Plato  shrinks  not  from  an 
abandonment  both  of  the  private  family,  perpetual  monog- 
amy, and  of  private  property.  But  of  modern  socialism 
there  is  here  no  vestige.  This  class  and  their  executing 
adjuncts  are  to  be  the  dominating  element,  the  Intelligence 
of  the  quasi-political  person,  the  State. 

It  is  odd  and  puzzling  to  observe  how  radically  Plato 
conceives  Love  as  merely  a  political  and  zoological  device: 
he  hesitates  not  to  bring  in  the  parallel  of  fowls  and  dogs: 
how  only  the  finest  individuals  are  allowed  to  mate  ("  Re- 
public," 5,  458,  e  sqq.^).  Plato  himself  was  never  married. 

It  is  a  matter  exceedingly  difficult  for  us  to  realize  the 
laxity  and  looseness  of  precepts  of  conduct  of  the  Greek 
world.  Let  us  learn  one  grave  matter.  Apart  from  a 
general  reprobation  of  such  misdeeds  as  murder,  incest, 
perjury,  parricide,  Greek  worship  furnished  substantially 
no  rules  of  conduct.  The  usages  of  the  state  bound  all 
its  members  and  also  furnished  concrete  Ethics  to  the 
members  of  the  commonwealth.  The  question  was  not 
what  was  good  or  evil  in  itself,  but  what  was  permitted 
or  prohibited  in  this  particular  polls :  everything  at  bot- 
tom is  institutional  ;  at  Athens  you  could  marry  your 
half-sister,  e.g.,  and  a  husband  acted  entirely  within  his 


236  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

rights  if  he  refused  to  rear  a  new-born  child,  although  he 
acknowledged  it  his  own,  his  own,  as  a  pullet  or  a  poorly 
glued  chair  might  be  his  property  to  deal  with  as  he 
chose.  I  fail  to  see  in  the  entire  range  of  Plato's  utter- 
ance any  incisive  precept  or  monition  of  radical  reform  or 
call  to  goodness,  for  the  people  at  large.  He,  too,  was  an 
Attic  Greek  and  in  his  old  age  (in  his  "  Laws  ")  there  are 
abundant  utterances  in  which,  in  a  way,  he  is  a  conform- 
ist with  his  country's  institutions,  inclusive  of  her  gods. 
Still  he  urges  that  they  are  gods  of  a  curious  limitation, 
-viz.,  created  gods.  And  people  must  also  hold  to  the 
lower  ranges  of  superhuman  beings,  viz.,  the  daimones 
and  the  heros  who  may  injure  or  bless  the  citizen.  In 
such  matters  the  citizen  must  follow  the  law  ("Timceus," 
40,  e).  At  bottom,  then,  all  these  generations  of  Greek 
gods  are  under-gods  and  creatures  of  the  One,  Eternal, 
and  Uncreated  ($.,  41,  a).  And  he  who  begat  the  Uni- 
verse speaks  to  them  as  follows  :  "  Ye  gods  of  gods, 
whose  craftsman  I  am  and  father  of  their  achievements, 
which  having  eventuated  through  me  are  indissoluble  if  I 
will  not.  That,  then,  which  at  one  time  was  bound  is  all 
soluble,  but  it  is  the  part  of  an  evil  one  to  wish  to  dis- 
solve that  which  was  well  fitted  together  and  is  in  fair 
state  ;  wherefore,  also,  since  you  have  come  to  be,  im- 
mortal indeed  you  are  not,  nor  indissoluble  at  all,  still 
you  are  in  no  wise  to  be  dissolved  nor  will  you  obtain  the 
lot  of  death,  since  you  obtained  by  lot  my  volition,  to  wit, 
a  bond  greater  still  and  more  sovereign  than  those  elements 
with  which  you  were  tied  together  when  you  were  born." 
Prolix  and  still  of  monumental  and  imposing  grandeur, 
too,  moods  bitter  or  smiling,  seriousness  or  irony  —  all 
these  and  many  more  strains  are  revealed  from  the  soul 
of  Plato  in  his  dialogues,  to  which  we  here  bid  a  farewell. 


Aristotle  of  Stageira  (384-322  B.C.)  was  of  a  long  race 
of  physicians.  The  medical  art  was  a  craft  pursued 
through  many  generations  from  mythical  Asklepios  and 
Machaon.  His  father  was  at  one  time  physician  in  ordi- 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  237 

nary  to  King  Amyntas  of  Macedon,  father  of  Philip  and 
grandfather  of  Alexander.  Envy,  academic  and  other- 
wise, has  bedaubed  the  ancient  biographies  with  vile  or 
mean  things.  But  we  have  his  Testament  also. 

Among  the  salient  traits  of  this  marvellous  mind  are, 
perhaps,  three  which  arrest  mankind  most.  These  are, 
in  my  estimation,  his  universality,  his  incredible  indus- 
try, his  profundity  coupled  with  logical  procedure :  for 
when  one  has  gained  a  certain  sympathy  with  his  assent- 
compelling  advance  from  thesis  to  thesis,  one  feels  an 
almost  sovereign  force  of  pure  thought.  The  very  absence 
of  all  those  literary  graces  which  issue  from  the  free  play 
of  the  imagination  and  the  emotions  in  his  great  but 
narrower  teacher  Plato — this  sterility,  I  say,  in  the  sestheti- 
cal  side  of  literature  permits  us  with  a  curious  entirety  of 
devotion  to  follow  the  Stagirite  in  his  keen  pursuit  of 
knowledge.  What  the  microscope,  the  telescope,  and  the 
retort  have  enabled  mankind  to  achieve  since,  we  know 
.  .  .  but  the  imperishable  honor  of  Aristotle  is  in  no 
wise  reduced  thereby.  When  Dante  in  his  initial  steps 
through  Inferno  saw  "  il  Maestro  di  color  che  sanno," 
"the  Master  of  those  who  know"  he  uttered  a  winged 
word  not  to  be  reduced  or  belittled  by  any  revaluation 
of  mediaeval  scholasticism.  Make  allowance  as  we  may, 
for  his  faithful  pupils  and  co-workers,  Theophrastos, 
Herakleides  Ponticus,  or  Aristoxenos,  Dikaiarchos,  the 
mere  sum  of  knowledge  gathered  sifted  and  arranged  is 
wonderful. 

The  psychological  analysis  of  passions  and  emotions, 
the  reviewing  of  all  political  forms  furnished  by  history,  the 
scientific  basis  of  grammar,  the  essentials  of  the  theory  of 
human  conduct,  body  and  soul,  matter  and  spirit,  eternity 
and  the  mathematical  aspects  of  astronomy,  all  these  are 
found  in  the  body  of  his  writings.  Hermann  Bonitz  spent 
a  quarter  century  from  1845  to  1870,  to  prepare  a  Greek 
concordance  of  the  words  occurring  in  Aristotle's  writings  : 
but  even  so  he  had  to  use  the  cooperation  of  other  scholars 
for  the  zoological  part.  Curious  and  unique  monument 
of  faithful  and  unrewarded  industry  and  deep  reading! 


238  TESTIMONIUM  ANIM.E 

Theory  of  Classification  and  all  Logical  processes,  —  the 
time  of  gestation  of  the  lizard,  the  essence  of  Justice,  or 
the  anatomy  of  the  eel,  the  physiology  of  sleep,  the  con- 
stitutional type  and  history  of  one  hundred  and  fifty-eight 
distinct  commonwealths,  winds  and  weather,  the  state- 
records  of  the  production  of  Attic  plays,  the  conger-eel  or 
the  analysis  of  sophistical  syllogisms,  the  rhetorical  function 
of  metaphor  —  all  these  and  such  universality  :  but  pro- 
found, exact,  original,  and  searching,  no  compilation, 
nothing  at  second  hand :  this  is  Aristotle. 

When  he  first  came  to  Athens,  his  father  was  dead. 
The  eager  youth  was  but  seventeen  and  Plato,  then  sixty- 
two,  was  for  a  while  absent  in  Magna  Greecia.  There 
was  the  brilliant  author  and  thinker,  an  elderly  man 
over  against  the  lad.  Clearly  for  a  number  of  years  the 
youth  was  a  Platonist.  Aristotle's  first  stay  —  his  Lehr- 
und  Wanderjahre  —  at  Athens  was  comprehended  in  the 
period  of  two  decades,  367-347,  to  Plato's  death  :  a  period 
of  gradual  transition  from  discipleship  to  originality  and 
independence. 

Aristotle's  beloved  friend,  Eudemos  of  Kypros,  perished 
before  Syracuse,  a  follower  of  Dio,  probably  in  the  summer 
of  353,  when  Aristotle  was  thirty-one.  The  dialogue  com- 
posed by  the  young  philosopher  soon  afterwards  was 
entitled  "  Eudemos,  on  the  Soul  "  :  clearly  still  strongly 
in  the  thraldom  of  the  great  Athenian  and  perhaps,  spe- 
cifically there,  of  Plato's  "Phaedo."  Aristotle  (Fragm. 
36,  Rose)  spoke  of  the  connection  of  body  and  soul,  com- 
paring it  with  the  exquisite  cruelty  sometimes  practised  by 
Etruscan  pirates,  who  tightly  laced  together,  face  to  face, 
a  living  prisoner  with  a  corpse.  Coupled  with  a  general 
affirmation  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  there  seem  to 
have  been  many  observations  of  actual  phenomena  of 
psychical  data.  As  to  the  graver  aspirations  of  mankind, 
I  cite  two  passages  from  Fragm.  40  (Rose)  :  "  Therefore 
they  cross  over  (die)  most  efficiently  and  most  blissfully. 
And  in  addition  to  the  fact  that  the  dead  are  blessed  and 
happy,  we  also  hold  that  it  is  not  pious  to  utter  any 
lie  about  them  or  a  slander  as  against  those  who  now 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  239 

have  entered  into  a  better  and  a  stronger  estate.  And 
these  things  endure  with  us  as  established  beliefs 
(vevopicrijieva)  so  primeval  and  ancient,  that  no  one  alto- 
gether knows  either  the  beginning  of  the  time  nor  him 
who  first  established  it,  but  it  turns  out  that  they  have  so 
held  during  boundless  time  throughout." 

Further  on  the  answer  extorted  from  Silenus  by  King 
Midas  :  "  Seed  of  a  laborious  daimon  and  heavy  Fortune, 
why  do  you  force  me  to  say  that  which  it  is  better  for 
you  not  to  comprehend  ?  For  coupled  with  ignorance  of 
one's  own  evils,  Life  is  most  untroubled.  But  for  men 
altogether  to  be  born  is  not  the  best  of  all,  nor  to  get  a 
share  in  the  best  nature :  best  then  for  all  men  and 
women  is  not  to  be  born :  that,  however,  which  follows 
after  this  in  order,  and  is  first  of  the  other  things,  capable 
of  accomplishment,  but  second  (in  rank),  is,  to  die  as 
quickly  as  possible  after  having  been  born.  .  .  ."  Aris- 
totle in  this  early  book  also  opposed  the  thesis  that  the 
soul  was  merely  a  harmony  of  bodily  functions. 

In  this  stage,  Aristotle  also  wrote  a  dialogue  on  Prayer, 
in  which  (Fragm.  46)  he  said  "  that  God  was  either  Intel- 
ligence or  something  in  the  neighborhood  of  Intelligence." 

The  most  notable  of  these  Dialogues  seems  to  have 
been  that  "  On  Philosophy,"  a  hortatory  discourse  imitated 
by  Cicero  in  his  "  Hortensius."  Here,  however,  he  seems 
to  have  dropped  the  senile  doctrines  of  his  master's  last 
years,  the  Ideal  Numbers  and  the  like. 

From  two  principles  (Fragm.  12),  Aristotle  held  there 
the  notion  of  gods  had  arisen  among  men  :  from  the  things 
that  happened  in  connection  with  the  soul,  visions,  and 
from  prophetic  impulses.  Men  thus  inferred  that  there 
was  something,  God,  a  being  which  in  itself  resembled 
the  soul  and  which  had  the  greatest  capacity  of  knowl- 
edge of  all.  Further  also  they  derived  the  notion  of  God 
from  the  things  above  us :  "  for  having  viewed  in  the 
daytime  the  sun  revolving  and  at  night  the  well-ordered 
movement  of  the  other  stars  (TO>I>  d\\cov  a<TT€pa>v)  they 
gained  the  belief  (evofiLcrav)  that  there  was  some  divinity 
who  was  the  cause  of  such  motion  and  good  order." 


240  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

A  noteworthy  fragment  also  is  No.  14  (preserved  by 
Cicero,  "  De  N.  D."  2,  95)  :  "  If  there  were  (beings)  who 
had  always  dwelt  under  the  earth  in  good  and  well- 
lighted  abodes  which  were  fitted  up  with  sculptures  and 
paintings  and  were  equipped  with  all  those  things  with 
which  those  people  are  abundantly  supplied  who  are 
deemed  very  rich  (beati)  and  yet  had  never  gone  out  to 
the  surface  of  the  earth,  but  had  been  informed  by  rumor 
and  hearsay  that  there  was  a  certain  power  and  force  of 
the  gods,  and  then  at  some  time,  after  the  chasms  of 
Earth  had  been  opened  and  so  they  had  been  enabled  to 
make  their  escape  from  those  hidden  domiciles,  when 
suddenly  they  had  seen  the  earth  and  the  seas  and  the 
sky,  had  become  acquainted  with  the  greatness  of  clouds 
and  the  force  of  the  winds  and  had  beheld  the  sun  and 
realized  both  its  greatness  and  its  beauty  as  well  as  its 
power  of  production,  the  fact,  that,  when  its  light  was 
spread  in  the  whole  firmament  it  produced  day,  but  when 
night  had  darkened  the  world,  then  they  clearly  mark  out 
the  heavens  studded  and  adorned  with  stars,  and  the 
vicissitudes  of  the  lights  of  the  moon  now  growing,  now 
declining,  and  the  risings  and  settings  of  all  these  and 
their  courses  set  and  immutable  in  all  eternity:  when 
they  saw  these  things,  forsooth  they  would  both  believe 
that  there  were  gods  and  these  so  great  works  were  the 
works  of  divine  beings." 

But  all  these  earlier  utterances  and  aspirations  were  in 
the  main  reverberations  of  his  master. 

We  will  now  take  up  the  mature  and  definite  elements 
of  his  own  thought  and  speculation. 

Aristotle  was  by  no  means  content  with  the  description 
or  classification  of  the  phenomena  of  the  actual  world. 
An  explanation  satisfied  with  mechanical  and  material 
elucidation  was  to  his  mind  utterly  inadequate.  He 
elevates  the  principle  of  aim,  end,  design,  as  axiomatic 
and  primal.  Hence  his  trenchant  dissent  also  from  De- 
mokritos  of  Abdera,  the  scientist  who  dispensed  with 
cause  and  design  in  his  view  and  reconstruction  of  the 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  241 

Universe.  "  Demokritos,  having  cast  off  the  task  of  stat- 
ing the  wherefore  (TO  o5  «/e/ca),  attaches  all  things  which 
Nature  uses,  to  necessity,  things  which  indeed  are  of  that 
kind,  but  at  the  same  time  exist  for  the  sake  of  something 
and  on  account  of  the  better  in  connection  with  each  ob- 
ject. We  may  therefore  freely  assume  that  development 
and  result  so  transpire  (i.e.  with  necessity)  but  not  on 
account  of  these  things  (i.e.  mechanical  causes),  but  on 
account  of  the  end  "  ("  De  Animalium  Generatione,"  5,  8,  p. 
789,  b,  2  sqq.}.  The  fact  that  experience  shows  an  un- 
varying sequence  of  certain  phenomena,  does  not  satisfy 
Aristotle :  Demokritos  improperly  disdains  finding  a  cause 
for  this  always  of  sequence.  Being  appears  to  us  as  a 
steady  process  moving  from  the  potential  (TO  Swapa  ov) 
to  the  form  and  essence  (TO  evepyeia  ov). 

Let  us  advance  even  more  closely  to  Aristotle's  peculiar 
and  specific  convictions.  Matter  is  eternal.  That  which 
"  moves  "  (influences)  it,  is  the  first  mover.  That,  into 
which  it  is  moved  or  changed,  is  the/orw,  the  essence  or 
substance  of  being. 

There  must  be  one  finest  or  primary  substance  which  is 
one,  and  is  itself  unmoved  ("  Met.,"  12,  6).  This  must 
be  from  eternity.  "  It  is  impossible  that  movement  should 
either  come  to  be,  or  be  destroyed  ;  for  it  was  always. 
Not  that  Time ;  for  it  is  not  possible  that  Earlier  and 
Later  should  be  if  Time  were  not.  And  movement,  there- 
fore, is  thus  continuous.  .  .  .  Nor  will  it  even  if  we 
assume  eternal  substances,  as  those  who  do  so  with  the 
Ideas,  if  there  will  not  inhere  in  them  a  principle  having 
the  power  to  effect  changes."  This  first  Mover  is  God. 
His  pursuit  (Siaywyr)')  is  comparable  to  that  which  we 
human  beings  have  but  a  little  while  at  a  time,  but  he 
eternally  and  always,  viz.,  pure  insight  and  contempla- 
tion. It  is  his  Intelligence,  nay  it  is  Intelligence  Absolute 
which  is  there  at  work.  "  And"  (this  Intelligence)  "pos- 
sesses Life;  for  the  realization  of  Intelligence  is  Life" 
("  Met.,"  12, 7),  "  and  he  (God)  is  the  realization:  now  his 
own  life  in  itself  is  the  best  and  the  eternal  realization. 
And  we  say  that  God  is  an  eternal  best  being,  so  that  God 


242  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

possesses  life  and  duration  continuous  and  eternal  :  for  this 
is  God.  And  all  those  who  assume,  as  do  the  Pythago- 
reans and  Speusippos  (nephew,  and  successor  to  Plato), 
that  the  fairest  and  best  is  not  in  beginning,  on  account 
of  the  fact  that  the  beginning  of  the  plants  and  animals 
are  indeed  causative,  but  that  fairness  and  perfection  are 
in  those  things  only  which  come  from  these,  they  believe 
riot  correctly.  For  seed  is  from  other  prior  perfect  beings, 
and  the  First  is  not  seed,  but  it  is  the  Perfect ;  as  one 
might  say  that  man  is  earlier  than  the  seed,  not  the  one 
begotten  from  this,  but  another  one,  from  whom  the  seed 
came.  That  there  is  then  some  substance  eternal  and 
unmoved  (i.e.  not  influenced  or  determined  by  agencies 
outside  of  itself)  and  separated  from  objects  of  sense- 
perception,  is  clear  from  the  statements  made.  And  it  has 
also  been  shown  that  no  measurable  quantity  (/-teyetfo?)  can 
have  this  Being,  but  it  is  non-composite  (a/Ac/??;?)  and  in- 
dissoluble. For  it  moves  during  the  boundless  time,  but 
nothing  limited  has  boundless  power."  He  holds  further 
("  Met.,"  12,  8)  that  the  nature  of  the  stars  is  some  eternal 
substance:  (though  it  is  difficult  to  follow  his  thought 
here  :  for  the  mover  who  is  himself  unmoved,  and  who 
moves  that  which  is  moved,  and  who  is  eternal  and  is 
earlier  than  that  which  is  moved,  could  not  very  well  be 
more  from  eternity  than  that  which  is  moved  by  him). 
The  stars,  then,  are  eternal.  All  motions  celestial  are  for 
the  sake  of  the  stars  :  the  design  is  immanent  in  them. 
There  is  no  starred  Universe  but  this  one.  "And  it  has 
been  handed  down  from  those  of  old  and  from  the  very 
ancient  ones,  left  to  posterity  in  the  form  of  a  myth,  that 
these  (the  stars)  are  gods,  and  that  the  Divinity  embraces 
All  Nature.  But  the  other  things  have  been  advanced  in 
a  way  actually  mythical  for  the  persuasion  of  the  Many 
and  for  the  enactment  of  laws  and  utilitarian  ends  :  for 
they  state  these  as  being  anthropomorphic  and  like  to  some 
of  the  other  animals,  and  they  make  other  statements 
sequential  to  these  and  resembling  what  has  been  said." 
"From  these  (tenets  of  popular  religion)  sever  the  first 
and  comprehend  it  alone,  to  wit,  that  they  believed  the 


THE  TFJAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  243 

first  substances  were  gods,  one  might  hold  that  it  was 
stated  divinely,  and,  as  is  likely,  each  system  of  accom- 
plishment (re'xvrf)  and  philosophy  having  oftentimes  been 
devised  and  destroyed  again  as  far  as  was  possible,  (it  is 
probable  that)  these  tenets  of  those  men  like  relics  have 
been  preserved  up  to  the  present  time  "  (the  conclusion 
of  "Met.,"  12,  8). 

The  astral  motions  suggest  "  that  there  is  one  who 
marshals  them"  ('o  Siarda-crwv,  Fragm.  13).  Further, 
God  needs  no  friend :  bliss  is  in  himself.  His  essence 
and  perfection  is  the  only  object  of  his  cogitation.  But 
what  ?  For  he  will  not  be  asleep.  Inasmuch  as  the  con- 
templative life  is  the  highest  —  an  Axiom  for  the  thinker 
Aristotle  —  that  will  be  the  divine  life. 

An  academic  and  cosmic  God,  but  singularly  and  utterly 
severed  from  human  beings  by  his  essence.  There  cannot 
be  any  affection,  Aristotle  holds,  directed  toward  God  or 
gods:  for  friendship  postulates  a  certain  measure  of  equal- 
ity :  "  the  gods  "  so  utterly  exceed  men  in  all  good  things, 
that  there  cannot  be  any  friendship  between  them  and 
men  ("Eth.  Nicom.,"  9,  9).  The  love  directed  to  God 
does  not  receive  (is  not  capable  of  receiving)  any  counter- 
love  :  "for  it  would  be  preposterous  if  one  were  to  say 
that  he  loved  Zeus"  (Magna  Moralia,  1208,  b,  29);  "hence 
we  neither  strive  for  love  of  the  god  nor  of  inanimate 
things."  It  would  be  ridiculous  if  one  censured  God  if 
he  failed  to  requite  love  in  proportion  ("Eth.,  Nicom.," 
8,3). 

God  does  not  propose  to  do  the  evil  things  ("  Topica," 
4,  5,  126,  a,  35)  ;  i.e.  it  is  in  the  power  of  God  to  do 
the  evil,  but  it  does  not  conform  to  his  nature.  God  is 
better  than  Virtue,  stronger  than  knowledge  ("Magn. 
Mor.,"  2,  5).  As  we  designate  extraordinary  badness  as 
bestiality,  so  the  counterpart  is  something  God-like,  some- 
thing beyond  expression,  as  being  beyond  man. 

What  is  the  beginning  of  "  motion  "  in  the  soul  ?  "  Now 
it  is  evident  that  just  as  God  is  in  the  Universe,  so  the 
Universe  is  in  God.  For  somehow  the  divinity  within  us 
moves  everything.  And  the  beginning  of  reason  is  not 


244  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

reason,  but  something  better.  But  what  is  better  than 
knowledge  unless  it  is  God?"  ("  Eth.  Eudem.,"  1248, 
b,  24  sqqf).  It  would  be  absurd  to  define  the  bliss  of  "the 
gods  "  as  action,  whether  in  the  domain  of  righteousness, 
or  of  bravery,  or  of  generosity,  or  of  continence. 

What  then  remains  but  contemplation  (#e&>/3ta)?  ("Eth. 
Nicom.,"  10,  8).  It  is  Aristotle's  personal  ideal :  his  con- 
fession of  faith :  his  God  absorbed  in  contemplation,  the 
Intelligence  of  the  Universe :  therefore  the  searching  and 
thinking  philosopher  is  nearest  to  God.  Plato  thought 
in  lines  and  circles  not  greatly  different.  The  practical 
moral  robustness  of  Socrates  is  somewhat  greater  than 
either. 

The  life  and  conduct  of  man  is  to  be  determined  by 
himself  alone.  There  is  no  anticipation  of  a  life  to  come, 
nor  any  divine  law  imposing  itself  upon  man.  The  "Soul" 
(really  animation)  is  omnipresent  in  the  body :  as  the 
form  to  the  wax  so  is  the  specific  soul  related  to  the 
specific  body.  Man  is  the  aim  and  end  of  visible  nature  : 
the  body  existing  for  the  sake  of  the  soul :  Reason  is 
imperishable,  whereas  memory,  desire,  love  are  bound  up 
with  a  bodily  function.  And  while  the  powers  of  the 
soul  are  developed  one  from  the  other  by  gradations, 
Reason  is  untouched  and  independent  of  all  of  these. 

As  to  conduct  Aristotle  denies  that  we  need  to  establish 
any  alternative  between  the  pleasurable  and  between 
rational  action  —  these  do  not  mutually  exclude  one  an- 
other. Pleasure  is  the  crown  and  result  of  all  normal  or 
perfect  action. 

In  virtue  there  must  be  pleasure  in  goodness. 

There  is  a  curious  and  painful  lack  of  absolute  and 
universal  law  in  Aristotle's  ethics. 

Virtue  or  specifically  "  Ethical  Virtue  "  (i.e.  excellence 
in  specific  forms  of  human  character)  is  greatly  varied 
according  to  sex,  age,  occupation,  a  man's  virtue,  a 
woman's  virtue.  Children  and  slaves,  strictly  speaking, 
have  no  virtue.  And  here  we  realize  the  desperate  dif- 
ficulty of  all  translating,  for  it  is  nothing  but  a  tentative 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  245 

and  very  imperfect  substitution  not  merely  of  words  for 
words,  but  of  notions  for  notions.  Now  this  very  word 
aret£'  to  which  we  particularly  referred  in  our  dis- 
course on  Pindar,  this  very  term  aretS'  is  not  at  all 
our  "  Virtue,"  but  really  it  is  power,  perfect  attainment, 
excellence.  So,  with  Aristotle,  the  blackmailer,  the  thief, 
have  their  specific  aret£f. 

But  Aristotle  assumes  a  general  apery  of  man  at  large, 
and  man  without  it  is  "  a  most  wicked  and  savage  being  " 
("Polit.,"!,  2). 

Now  this  positive  virtue,  or  better,  excellence  of  man  is 
revealed  in  many  specific  forms,  all  of  which  have  this  in 
common  that  they  maintain  a  certain  intermediate  point  or 
attitude  (/ieo-or^?)  between  extremes.  An  enumeration, 
e.g.  in  "Eth.  Eudem.,"  2,  3,  where  first  are  named  the 
two  vicious  extremes  and  then  their  middle-point,  the 
correlated  specific  virtue. 

Irascibility,  Stolidity,  Gentleness, 

Recklessness,  Cowardice,  Bravery, 

Shamelessness,  Stupor,  Respect, 

Dissoluteness,  Callousness,  Continence, 

Envy,  Obscurity,  Giving  each  his  due, 

Gain,  Loss,  Justice,  and  so  forth. 

More  and  more,  even  in  the  narrow  limits  of  this  sketch 
it  grows  clear  that  the  essence  of  Aristotle's  thought  is 
analytical,  descriptive,  driving  stakes  and  drawing  maps 
in  this  actual  world  of  men  such  as  they  are.  For  is  it 
not  after  all  merely  a  supremely  clever  psychological 
classification,  this  ethical  theory?  there  is  no  clarion  voice 
equally  calling  upon  all ;  one  may  say  that  Aristotle  has 
not  discovered  the  Conscience  as  yet.  After  all,  the  full 
measure  of  truth  is  made  dependent  upon  culture  and 
social  station.  The  curse  of  slavery  is  revealed  even  here, 
in  the  acutest  and  most  universal  Mind  of  the  ancient 
world,  I  mean  revealed  in  his  profound  contempt  for 
manual  labor.  They  who  till  the  soil,  who  are  craftsmen 
and  who  trade  on  the  market-place,  are  below  his  sympathy 


246  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

and  concern.  A  great  many  crafts  or  mechanical  trades 
were  actually  carried  on  by  slaves  under  the  direction  of 
their  masters.  "  The  barbarians  are  more  slave-like  in 
their  types  of  character  by  nature  than  the  Greeks " 
("  Polit.,"  3,  14).  "  Non-Greek  and  slave  is  the  same 
thing  by  nature"  ("Polit.,"  1,  2).  Even  before  the 
Stoics,  it  would  seem,  nobler  voices  had  been  raised  among 
the  Greeks  which  called  slavery  an  institution  contrary 
to  nature.  Now  Aristotle  undertakes  to  determine  this 
problem  both  by  reason  and  actual  experience  ("Polit.," 
1,  5).  Certain  beings  from  their  mother's  womb  are  set 
apart  for  being  ruled.  It  is  a  rule  pervading  animate 
nature.  In  the  best  man  the  soul  rules  the  body,  a  rule 
essentially  masterful.  So,  too,  domesticated  animals  owe 
their  very  preservation  to  human  rule.  Similar  is  the 
relation  of  male  and  female,  the  one  stronger,  the  other 
weaker,  the  one  ruling,  the  other,  ruled.  Now  there  are 
certain  human  beings,  whose  intrinsic  inferiority  by  a 
parity  of  reasoning  is  as  manifest  as  soul  to  body,  as  beast 
to  man  —  beings  whose  sole  function  and  purpose  is  bodily, 
and  these  are  naturally  slaves :  in  social  function  and  worth 
differing  but  little  from  domesticated  animals.  And  it  is 
profitable  to  them  and  it  is  right  that  these  should  be 
slaves. 

And  here,  in  our  concern  for  Aristotle's  humanity  and 
for  his  estimation  and  valuation  of  actual  mankind  as  he 
saw  it,  let  us  append  his  delineation  of  the  character- 
types  of  the  successive  ages  of  man  ("Rhetoric,"  2,  12 
«<?.),  particularly  youth  and  old  age. 

"  The  young,  as  to  their  character,  are  given  to  desires, 
and  so  endued  as  to  realize  whatever  they  desire.  And 
of  physical  desires  they  are  most  inclined  to  follow  the 
sexual  ones,  and  they  are  without  self-control  as  to  these. 
And  they  easily  veer  about,  and  are  dainty  about  their 
desires  and  maintain  their  desire  with  intensity,  but 
quickly  cease.  For  their  acts  of  will  are  keen  but  not  of 
large  measure,  like  the  thirst  and  hunger  of  those  who  are 
ailing.  And  they  are  emotional  and  of  keen  feelings  and 
qualified  to  follow  their  impulse.  And  they  are  subject 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  247 

to  their  feelings,  for  on  account  of  ambition  they  cannot 
endure  being  slighted,  but  they  are  aggrieved  if  they 
believe  they  are  wronged.  And  ambitious  indeed  they 
are,  but  in  a  higher  degree  lovers  of  victory.  For  youth 
desires  preeminence,  and  victory  is  a  kind  of  preeminence. 
.  .  .  And  they  are  not  malicious,  but  good-natured, 
because  they  have  not  viewed  many  acts  of  badness.  And 
trustful  because  they  have  not  yet  been  often  deceived." 
But  this  must  suffice  from  this  chapter.  There  follows 
(chap.  13)  the  characterization  of  the  elderly  and  those  who 
have  passed  the  zenith  of  life.  These  in  all  ways  form 
the  direct  counterpart  of  youth.  They  have  often  been 
deceived  and  they  have  learned  "that  the  greater  part 
of  things  are  poor"  and  so  they  "maintain  nothing  with 
unswerving  firmness  ..."  "and  they  surmise,  but  they 
know  nothing."  .  .  .  "And  they  are  malicious;  for 
malice  means  to  put  the  worst  construction  on  everything. 
Further  are  they  suspicious  of  evil  on  account  of  their 
distrust,  and  distrustful  on  account  of  their  experience. 
.  .  .  And  they  are  mean-spirited  because  they  have 
been  humbled  by  life;  for  they  desire  nothing  great  or 
extraordinary,  but  merely  livelihood.  And  they  are  illib- 
eral :  for  one  of  the  necessary  things  is  substance ;  and  at 
the  same  time  experience  has  taught  them  how  difficult  it 
is  to  acquire,  and  how  easy  to  lose.  And  cowardly  are 
they  and  fearful  of  all  future  things  ;  for  their  disposition 
is  the  counterpart  to  that  of  the  young;  for  they  are 
chilled  and  the  young  are  hot.  .  .  .  And  fond  of  life 
are  they,  and  especially  near  the  last  day.  .  .  ."  "  And 
they  are  selfish  more  than  they  ought;  for  this  too  is  a 
kind  of  smallness  of  soul.  And  they  live  with  a  view  to 
the  useful,  not  to  the  noble,  more  than  they  should :  be- 
cause they  are  selfish.  .  .  .  And  shameless  are  they 
more  than  delicately-minded ;  for  on  account  of  the  fact 
that  they  are  not  equally  concerned  for  the  noble  and  the 
useful,  they  neglect  appearances.  .  .  . 

"  Therefore,  also  men  of  that  age  appear  continent ; 
for  the  passions  have  relaxed ;  and  they  are  slaves  to 
lucre.  ,  ." 


248  TESTIMONIUM  ANL\LE 

"  And  compassionate  old  men  too  are,  but  not  for  the 
same  cause  as  the  young  ;  .  .  .  for  they  (the  old)  believe 
that  everything  is  close  at  hand  for  themselves  to  suffer ; 
and  this  was  an  element  of  compassion.  Hence  they  are 
given  to  lamentation.  ..."  The  utter  nothingness  of 
the  aesthetical  bliss  of  Greekdom  of  which  the  conoscenti 
have  raved  particularly  from  Winckelmann  and  Goethe  to 
Shelley  and  Walter  Pater  —  I  say  how  as  nothing  was  this 
fictitious  bliss  in  illumining  that  decline  of  life. 


Exposure  of  children  is  entirely  a  matter  of  conven- 
ience. And  not  only  this:  but  ("Polit.,"  7,  16)  if  preg- 
nancy occurs  contrary  to  the  fixed  number  convenient  to 
the  interest  of  the  given  commonwealth,  then  abortion 
must  be  performed. 

As  to  the  Venus  Canina,  the  ever  growing  ulcer  of  the 
Grecian  world.  Where  he  actually  does  not  hesitate  to 
ascribe  it  to  Minos  as  a  deliberate  and  primeval  institu- 
tion of  Crete  —  economic  at  bottom,  to  limit  the  popu- 
lation ("Polit.,"  2,  10) — he  falls  unspeakably  below  the 
lofty  and  burning  condemnation  of  his  master,  Plato; 
condemnation,  it  is  true,  only  penned  in  that  thinker's 
old  age,  for  the  discussions  in  the  "  Symposion "  and  in 
the  "  Phaedrus "  are  indeed  lax  enough.  One  shivers 
at  the  coolness  with  which  the  tutor  of  Alexander  re- 
fers to  the  death  of  Philip,  and  the  specific  personal 
circumstances  ("  Polit.,"  5,  10)  which  caused  the  death 
of  Periander. 

Aristotle  was  generous  in  his  will  towards  several  of 
his  slaves.  He  provided  that,  wherever  his  tomb  was  to 
be  made,  there  also  the  bones  of  his  wife  Pythias  were 
to  be  laid.  For  his  concubine  Herpyllis  also  he  pro- 
vided — "  because  she  proved  to  be  devoted  to  me " 
("Diog.  Laer.,"  5,  13).  Also,  his  son-in-law  Nikanor 
was  to  dedicate  a  sacred  gift  which  Aristotle  once  had 
vowed  when  Nikanor  was  in  peril,  marble  figures  of 
four  cubits  to  Zeus  the  Saviour  and  to  Athena  the 
Saviour. 


THE  TRIAD  OF  GREEK  THINKERS  249 

NOTE.  —  It  is  clear  that,  as  regards  Socrates,  Xenophon  must 
remain  our  chief  authority.  It  is  clear,  too,  that  there  was  a  quasi- 
spiritual  discipleship  in  the  souls  of  the  nobler  of  the  pupils  of 
Socrates.  Character  and  Soul  are  vastly  greater  than  learning : 
Socrates  will  go  on  to  stir  mankind  more  than  the  acute  and  cyclo- 
pedic Aristotle.  What  Zeller,  the  erudite,  means  in  the  subjoined 
utterance  is  hard  to  understand:  that  Socrates  brought  about  "an 
irremediable  breach  in  the  plastic  unity  of  Greek  life "  —  a  some- 
what absurd  phrase,  in  which  the  Hegelianism  of  the  earlier  Zeller 
stands  revealed.  There  is  a  slight  resemblance  with  Franklin  too, 
in  Socrates,  viz.,  that  his  vision  of  culture  is  limited  by  utilitarian 
considerations,  Xen.  "Mem.,"  4,  7,  1  sqq.  On  the  unwritten  law 
and  the  immanent  morality  of  the  regulations  of  Nature,  4,  4,  19. 
As  to  Plato,  the  footnotes  of  Zeller  contain  substantially  all  the 
available  material.  Dying  Paganism  endowed  (in  the  Neo-Platonists) 
the  great  Athenian  with  quasi-divine  inspiration  ;  similarly  they  clung 
to  and  magnified  the  Homeric  epics. 

What  we  may  call  the  intuitive  and  transcendental  element  in 
Plato's  thought  is  by  him  often  invested  in  a  myth,  and  Plato 
sometimes  combines  with  the  myths  moral  exhortations  which  he 
never  would  have  grounded  on  uncertain  fables.  Plato  had  contempt 
for  manual  labor. 

Plato's  voyages  to  Sicily  were  partly  determined  by  his  profound 
interest  in  Pythagorean  doctrine  and  history,  partly  it  seems  by  an 
aspiration  that  he  might  find  political  conditions  promising  some  hope 
of  reconstructing  human  society  through  some  sympathetic  autocrat, 
perhaps. 

On  Prosperity  of  the  Wicked,  "  Legg.,"  849,  d. 

We  learn  that  in  Plato's  day  also  "  the  many  "  held  that  Nature 
begot  men  from  some  automatic  and  mechanical  cause,  "  Soph.,"  265,  c. 

His  delineation  of  materialists  in  "  Soph.,"  246,  a-b,  remains  sug- 
gestive even  for  us.  On  Heaven  and  Retribution,  v.  "  Gorg.,"  523  sqq. 
—  death,  the  judgment  :  souls  stripped  of  all  irrelevant  properties, 
ib.  Reincarnation  as  a  distinct  form  of  divine  retribution,  "Phsedo," 
81,  e  sqq.  Like  a  true  Socratic,  Plato  rates  lower  the  virtue  that  goes 
with  tradition  and  practical  effort  than  that  associated  with  conscious 
and  deliberate  reflection,  "  Phaedo,"  82,  b.  Motives  for  purity,  ib.,  82,  c. 

Concupiscence  in  man  bound  up  with  his  corporality,  ib.,  82,  e;  cf. 
Hermann  Bonitz,  "  Hermes,"  5,  413  sqq.  Pindar  cited  for  immortal- 
ity of  the  soul,  "  Meno.,"  81,  b.  Sins  and  death, "  Gorg.,"  522,  e. 

Plato  makes  the  gymnasia  responsible  for  unnatural  lust,  "  Leges," 
636,  b. 

Athenian  goodness  less  communal  (and  institutional)  than  that  of 
other  commonwealths  —  we  may  say  less  community-made,  ib.,  642, 
c.  Keep  slaves  in  their  place,  ib.,  778,  a. 

Jowett  forgets  often  that  Plato  wrote  and  lived  in  a  pagan  world. 
As  for  Aristotle,  it  is  obvious  that  probably  more  than  a  decade  elapsed 
before  the  younger  man.  began  slowly  to  emancipate  himself  from 


250  TESTLMONIUM  ANIM.E 

Plato  :  younger  indeed  Aristotle  was :  how  overwhelming  must  have 
been  the  prestige  of  the  elder  man  at  first :  he  being  forty-five  years 
the  senior.  See  on  life  and  letters  of  Aristotle,  also  the  article  by 
Gercke  in  "  Pauly-Wissowa."  As  to  Aristotle,  we  may  say  that  prob- 
ably never  has  there  been  such  a  combination  in  one  person  of  the 
man  devoted  to  metaphysics  no  less  than  to  exact  study  of  mathe- 
matics and  science. 

But  we  must  go  on  to  the  descent  and  decline,  though  Stoicism 
presents  many  noble  elements. 


CHAPTER  XII 

HELLENIC  DECLINE.      ATTIC    MORALITY.      THE   SOCIETY 
DRAMA  OF  MENANDER.     EPICURUS  AND  ZENO 

OUR  interest  in  the  political  history  of  Greece  is  due, 
in  the  main,  to  that  other  one,  namely,  in  the  culture  of 
that  gifted  nationality.  The  time  of  Plato's  dusk  of  life 
and  of  Aristotle's  establishing  of  knowledge  as  chief  end 
of  man,  —  that  epoch,  I  say,  witnessed  also  the  rapid  de- 
cline of  the  freedom,  at  least  of  the  self-determination,  of 
the  Hellenic  commonwealths.  A  hostage  in  Thebes  in 
his  own  youth,  Philip,  son  of  Amyntas,  fully  grasped  the 
true  measure  of  the  political  morality  of  his  southern 
neighbors.  The  narrow  spirit  of  those  commonwealths 
had  remained  narrow,  or  become  narrower.  A  scholar 
and  stylist  pure  and  simple,  attaining  to  a  great  age  with 
undiminished  powers  of  expression,  entirely  free  from  per- 
sonal ambition  and  the  rancor  of  the  practical  politician, 
Isocrates  of  Athens  witnessed  the  entire  span  of  things  from 
the  death  of  Pericles  to  the  establishment  of  Macedonian 
supremacy.  In  the  year  340  the  Attic  observer  completed 
his  "Panathenaikos."  This  political  essay  mirrors  the 
political  consciousness  of  the  highly  cultivated  Athenian, 
it  mirrors  no  less  what  we  may  call  the  political  morality 
in  that  eventide  of  Greek  independence.  Sparta  had  never 
recovered  herself  after  her  collapse  at  Leuktra,  371.  The 
squabbles  at  the  political  congress  preceding  the  catas- 
trophe of  Sparta's  leadership  are  noteworthy  in  our  present 
design.  It  was  at  Sparta,  too  (Xen.,  "  Hellen.,"  6,  3), 
where,  at  a  Greek  congress,  the  legends  of  primal  times  were 
still  as  potent  as  ever :  Triptolemos  and  Demeter,  Hercu- 
les, Castor,  and  Pollux  were  arguments  in  political  debate, 
Thebes  still  darkened  by  the  shadows  of  (Edipus,  and  the 
fear  or  hope  of  Persian  money  a  very  vivid  matter.  And 

251 


252  TESTIMONIUM  ANIALE 

so  even  the  old  Attic  man  of  letters,  Isocrates,  after  these 
events,  directs  a  bitter  passage  against  Thebes  unnamed 
(121  85-.),  a  record  of  unspeakable  crime  which  they  must 
still,  and  justly,  bear.  Even  more  intense  is  his  aversion 
for  the  Spartans.  Their  unfriendliness  to  culture  and 
progressive  civilization  is  scored  again  and  again.  Cul- 
ture and  the  arts  :  "  from  which  they  keep  away  more 
than  the  barbarians  ;  for  the  latter  may  seem  to  have  been 
both  learners  and  teachers  of  many  inventions,  but  the 
former  have  fallen  short  of  the  common  culture  and  phi- 
losophy to  such  a  degree  that  they  do  not  even  learn  let- 
ters." .  .  .  Decisive  is  the  fall  of  the  Spartan  spirit  away 
from  the  immortal  sacrifice  at  Thermopylae,  for  now  "  they 
look  towards  nothing  else  than  how  to  obtain  the  greatest 
amount  of  the  possession  of  others."  But  we  Athenians 
strove  to  obtain  a  good  name  in  Greece  at  large.  — 
Every  one  is  possessed  with  the  spirit  of  covetousness 
towards  his  political  neighbor  (244).  Much  vaunted  in- 
deed is  the  self-control  and  the  subordination  of  Spartans, 
but  they  are  and  abide  as  impervious  to  ideas  and  moni- 
tion coming  from  non-Spartan  Greece  as  though  such 
voices  were  uttered  beyond  the  pillars  of  Hercules.  In  a 
word,  the  elements  and  forces  that  made  for  separateness, 
for  narrow  pride,  for  exaggeration  of  the  particular  and 
specific  in  Greek  politics,  greatly  outweighed  those  that 
made  for  harmony,  compromise,  or  union.  We  may  con- 
fidently assume  that  the  majority  of  Greek  politicians  had 
an  itching  palm  and  that  King  Philip's  gold  bought  a 
definite  number  of  these  patriots  in  pretty  nearly  aU  the 
Greek  city-republics.  And  it  was  entirely  without  con- 
sequence that  Demosthenes,  the  Attic  champion  of  a  deca- 
dent electorate,  named  these  commercial  men  in  his  splen- 
did speeches.  Arnold  Schsefer  presents  the  following 
summary  (" Demosthenes  und  seine  Zeit"  II,  40):  "It 
was  Philip's  system  to  raise  up  individual  dynasts,  whom 
he  supported  with  favor  and  funds,  and  if  necessary  with 
mercenary  troops.  And  whenever  a  Greek  community 
crossed  his  purposes,  Philip  knew  no  mercy :  of  the  towns 
he  allowed  no  stone  to  remain  on  the  other  and  the  people 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          253 

he  sold  into  slavery.  So  had  Potidsea  fared,  Methone  not 
much  better:  a  similar  fate  was  to  strike  Olynthos  and 
the  Chalkidian  towns,  and  the  entire  people  of  the  Pho- 
cians  Philip  in  cold  blood  abandoned  to  the  vengeance  of 
embittered  foes."  This  matter  of  the  Phocians  has  some 
concern  for  us.  The  Phocians  in  their  distressful  condi- 
tion, unable  further  to  hold  the  field  against  their  Boeo- 
tian neighbors,  were  induced  to  plunder  the  sanctuary  of 
Delphi  (after  354  B.C.)  and  turn  the  gold  and  silver 
anathemata  into  a  war  fund  and  to  other  purposes.  This 
was  the  "  Sacred  War,"  so  called,  which  afforded  Philip 
the  welcome  opportunity  to  gain  power  in  central 
Greece. 

Onomarchos,  their  leader,  really  desired  to  save  his 
desperate  private  affairs  —  hence  the  looting  of  Apollo's 
shrine  and  the  desecration  of  the  "Navel  of  the  Earth." 
And  the  willingness  with  which  Greeks  everywhere  ac- 
cepted coin  from  melted  sacred  gifts,  proves  a  certain 
palpable  demoralization  of  religious  sentiment  such  as  it 
was.  Even  from  Athens  and  Sparta  came  mercenaries 
who  eagerly  took  this  Delphian  gold.  And  some  time  be- 
fore these  events,  when  the  Athenian  commander  Iphic- 
rates  was  stationed  in  the  Ionian  Sea  near  Corcyra 
(Diodoros,  16,  57)  and  Dionysius,  ruler  of  Syracuse,  had 
sent  gods'  figures  (agalmata)  wrought  from  gold  and 
ivory  destined  for  Olympia  and  Delphi,  Iphicrates  hap- 
pened upon  these  sacred  ships  and  despatched  to  Athens 
for  information  as  to  what  he  should  do.  And  the  demos 
ordered  him  "  not  to  analyze  religious  problems,  but  to  in- 
vestigate how  to  furnish  enduring  support  to  the  troops." 
Thus  the  Athenians,  who  prided  themselves  on  their  own 
institutional  piety,  did,  in  the  taunting  phrase  of  the  en- 
raged West  Greek  autocrat,  "commit  sacrilege  against 
the  gods  by  land  and  sea." 

As  for  the  Phocian  looters,  some  of  the  treasures  had  a 
particularly  atrocious  destination.  For  even  the  gold  of 
Krossus  now  was  melted  down,  and  the  wanton  and  wil- 
ful impulses  of  the  leaders  were  gratified  to  the  uttermost. 
Onomarchos  gave  lavishly  of  the  Delphian  treasures  to 


254  TESTIMONIUM  ANULE 

his  boy-favorites :  Theopompos,  a  contemporary  his- 
torian, wrote  of  these  unspeakable  things  with  full  and 
specific  detail  ("Athenseus,"  605,  a).  These  boys  were 
all  comely,  their  age,  their  beauty,  their  own  names,  and 
their  fathers'  names  were  blazoned  through  the  Greek 
world.  And  Athenseus  himself,  who  compiled  his 
"  Scholars'  Banquet "  about  200  A.D.,  devotes  one  entire 
book  to  the  subject  of  (vE/3<0<?)  Eros. 

It  is  with  humiliation  and  sadness  that  we  comprehend 
the  enormous  extension  and  the  cancer-like  persistence  of 
unnatural  lust  as  a  veritable  institution  among  the  Greeks. 
And  those  who  came  later  always  could  point  to  a  splendid 
gallery  of  men  of  genius,  the  very  pride  of  Greece,  so 
named,  so  known.  The  friendships  of  the  heroic  legends 
were  thus  explained,  and  Minos  whose  righteous  life  made 
him  a  judge  of  the  dead,  Minos  it  was  whom  Ganymede 
served.  Rhadamanthys  was  similarly  dragged  from  his 
high  estate  by  the  lyre  of  the  impure  Ibykos.  Ion  of 
Chios  in  detail  presented  this  vicious  trend  in  Sophokles, 
the  same  Sophokles  who  wrote  the  "  Antigone "  and 
"  CEdipus  at  Kolonos."  Saddest  of  all  is  this,  that  Epami- 
nondas  is  so  remembered  and  so  named.  And  the  Sacred 
Band  of  Thebes. 

But  most  wretched  of  all  is  the  fact  that  a  Welcker,  a 
Preller,  have  not  been  merely  mealy-mouthed  about  the 
matter. 

And  if  the  men  of  light  and  leading  were  so  seized  by 
the  national  plague,  what  of  the  vulgar  folk  1  Now  the 
Solonian  laws  of  Athens  forbade  such  a  one  to  speak  be- 
fore the  demos.  But  the  peal  of  Aristophanic  guffaws 
over  and  over  screams  out  to  his  amused  fellow-citizens 
that  this  vice  was  the  veritable  preparation  for  distin- 
guished success  on  the  bema. 

About  345  B.C.  JEschines  at  Athens,  in  playing  his 
game  of  Philippian  politics,  sought  out  an  active  man  of 
affairs  and  public  orator,  Timarchos,  and  endeavored  to 
bring  about  his  elimination  from  public  life  under  the 
Solonian  statute.  The  foe  of  Demosthenes  frankly  ad- 
mits that  he  is  not  impelled  by  moral  indignation,  but  by 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          255 


the  motives  of  a  personal  political  feud. 
phrase  is  decorous,  and  he  speaks  of  the  former  lovers  of 
Timarchos  with  an  air  of  distinguished  consideration  and 
profound  social  regret,  of  a  matter  fairly  venial.  We 
will,  however,  give  the  unscrupulous  ex-actor  credit  for 
one  or  two  phrases,  e.g.  as  "sinning  against  their  own 
bodies  "  (22),  "  outrage  against  his  own  body  "  (116)  :  on 
the  whole,  however,  we  are  made  to  feel  that  notoriety 
would  make  such  a  one  an  object  of  ridicule  rather  than 
of  moral  indignation  or  censure. 

And  the  purchasers  or  seducers  are  hardly  visited  with 
any  serious  strictures  at  all.  We  learn  also  that  the  chief 
import  of  the  peculiar  term  of  Greek  ethics  (sopTirosyne) 
is,  primarily  and  essentially,  continence,  abstinence  from 
lewdness. 

Even  more  significant  than  the  details  of  this  case 
against  Timarchos  are  some  Attic  statutes.  It  was  pro- 
vided by  Solon  (9),  e.g.  at  what  hour  the  free  boy  must 
go  to  his  classroom  ;  then,  in  company  with  how  many 
boys  he  must  enter  and  when  he  must  leave.  The 
teachers  of  letters  as  well  as  the  instructors  in  bodily 
exercise  were  forbidden  in  the  same  statutes  to  open  their 
classroom  or  wrestling  school  before  sunrise,  and  enjoined 
their  closing  before  sunset,  "  rating  solitude  and  darkness 
with  much  suspicion  "  (10).  The  very  "  paidagogos," 
or  boy's  slave-escort,  is  the  object  of  Solon's  concern. 

The  chorus-leader  who  undertook  out  of  his  own  purse 
as  a  public  service  (or  leiturgia)  the  training  of  a 
boys'  chorus,  must  be  not  less  than  forty  years  old.  The 
causes  of  such  statutes  need  no  further  exegesis  from  the 
present  writer. 

But  we  must  follow  ^Eschines  one  step  further.  The 
worship  of  physical  comeliness,  the  craze  of  the  gymnasia, 
the  mandatory  ecstasy  spent  on  these  things  from  Winckel- 
mann  to  Pater,  —  Walter  Pater,  —  all  these  things  which 
your  Philistine  will  dogmatically  assert  as  culture,  very 
high  culture  indeed,  all  these  things  we  see  in  the  actual 
life  of  the  Greeks  were  bound  up,  inextricably  bound  up, 
with  this  blackest  cesspool  of  Hellenic  paganism.  I  will 


256  TESTBIONIUM  ANDLE 

transcribe  further  from  ^Eschines  (13  «^.)  !  "After  these 
things,  then,  ye  Athenians,  he  (Solon)  lays  down  statutes 
about  misdeeds  which  are  indeed  great,  but,  I  believe,  are 
taking  place  in  the  city  ;  for  it  is  from  the  fact  that 
certain  things  are  done  which  it  behooves  should  not,  it  is 
from  this  cause  that  the  men  of  old  established  their 
statutes.  In  specific  terms  certainly  the  statute  says,  if 
father  or  brother  or  uncle  or  guardian  or  altogether  any 
one  of  those  who  have  authority,  hire  out  any  one  to  sub- 
mit to  a  meretricious  relation,  against  the  boy  himself  he 
(Solon)  does  not  permit  an  indictment  for  meretricious 
relations  to  lie,  but  against  him  who  hired  out  and  him 
who  paid  hire  in  his  own  interest.  .  .  .  And  he  has 
made  the  penalties  for  both  alike,  and  that  it  shall  not  be 
obligatory  for  the  boy  when  full-grown  to  support  his 
father  nor  to  furnish  him  residence,  he  shall  not  do  it 
who  has  been  hired  out  to  sustain  meretricious  relations, 
nevertheless  when  (the  elder)  has  died,  he  shall  bury  him 
and  show  him  the  other  customary  honors." 

While  anxious  to  pass  on  and  away,  we  pause  for  one 
further  antiquarian  observation.  It  was  a  condition  and 
not  a  theory  with  which  Athens  was  here  confronted. 
The  state  in  no  wise  endeavored  to  extirpate  this  evil. 
Nay,  it  went  so  far  as  to  farm  out,  annually,  the  tax  for 
sexual  immorality  (the  iropviKov  re'Xo?)  to  the  highest 
bidder. 

In  his  old  age  ("  Laws,"  1,  636,  1),  Plato  wrote  of  the 
Athletic  Schools  of  Greece  as  partly  wholesome,  partly 
noxious.  And  the  beginning  of  this  perversion  he  ascribes 
to  the  institutions  of  the  Doric  race,  —  the  associations 
there  established,  he  claims,  bred  this  practice. 

Alexander,  that  rare  genius,  began  his  meteoric  career 
nobly ;  nobly  too  in  maintaining  at  first  a  continence  rare 
in  that  time  of  Hellenic  corruption,  but  during  his  Asiatic 
campaigns  this  virtue  was  abandoned.  I  will  record  for 
him  these  nobler  beginnings  only.  "  When  his  admiral 
Philoxenos  wrote  to  him,  that  there  was  with  Philoxenos 
a  certain  Theodoros  of  Tarentum  who  had  for  sale  two 
boys  of  surpassing  comeliness,  and  inquiring  whether  he 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          257 

should  purchase  them,  in  a  fit  of  annoyance,  Alexander 
shouted  many  times  at  his  friends,  asking  whatever  base- 
ness Philoxenos  knew  of  him  (Alexander)  for  squatting 
there  and  sheltering  such  opprobrious  things.  And 
Philoxenos  himself  Alexander  in  a  letter  abused  roundly 
and  bade  him  send  Theodores  together  with  his  wares  to 
perdition  "  (Plutarch,  "  Alex.,"  22).  Maximus  Tyrius,  a 
Greek  essayist  and  philosopher  (fl.  ab.  200  A.D.),  wrote 
a  number  of  long-winded  essays  discriminating  between 

Eure  and  impure  love,  particularly  among  the  philosophers, 
3r   these,  from  Socrates   downward,  were  the  object  of 
constant  innuendo   and  imputation   on  the   part   of    the 
general  public  or  from  the  sectaries  of  other  schools. 

Xenophon  has  immortalized  Socrates :  but  he  also  makes 
him  the  centre  of  a  banquet  where  (as  with  Plato)  love 
was  the  chief  theme.  But  always  in  the  same  direction, 
at  best  an  apotheosis  of  comeliness.  And  so  Kritobulos 
says  there  ("  Symp.,"  4,  12)  :  "  For  now  I  take  more 
pleasure  in  gazing  on  Kleinias  than  upon  all  beauty  in 
the  world ;  and  I  would  be  content  to  be  blind  for  all 
others  rather  than  for  him,  and  him  alone  ;  and  I  am  dis- 
tressed at  night,  and  in  my  sleep,  because  I  see  him  not, 
and  to  the  day  and  the  sun  I  am  very  grateful  because 
they  reveal  Kleinias  to  me.  And  indeed  we  fair  ones 
have  a  right  to  be  proud  of  this  also,  that  the  strong  man 
must  acquire  his  boons  by  exertion,  and  the  chivalrous 
man  by  facing  danger,  and  the  wise  man  by  discourse  :  but 
the  comely  one  even  when  at  rest  can  accomplish  any- 
thing. I,  at  least,  although  I  know  that  money  is  a 
pleasing  possession,  would  more  gladly  give  my  possessions 
to  Kleinias  than  accept  a  second  estate  from  another,  and 
more  gladly  would  I  be  a  slave  than  free,  if  Kleinias  were 
willing  to  rule  over  me." 


Into  this  Attic  society  came  Menander,  an  Athenian 
of  the  Athenians,  with  his  society  plays,  standard  and 
model  of  the  New  Comedy  as  the  Alexandrines  reckoned  the 
chronicles  of  Greek  letters.  Rather  more  than  a  generation 


258  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

after  Xenophon's  old  age,  he  began  to  produce  plays  under 
the  public  system  of  dramatic  production.  Born  in  342 
in  the  very  eventide  of  Attic  autonomy,  he  began  to  present 
dramas  in  the  Dionysiac  theatre  completed  by  the  worthy 
Lykurgos  (son  of  Lykophron).  His  "Wrath"  was  his 
first  production,  given  in  321,  when  both  Alexander  and 
Demosthenes  were  dead,  and  the  sympathies  of  his  country- 
men were  turned  away  from  political  concerns.  Menander 
seems  to  have  mirrored  the  life  of  his  town  and  time  with 
admirable  fidelity,  nor  are  there  lacking  notes  of  his  own 
soul.  Most  of  our  insight  into  his  matter  and  art  we  owe 
to  Terence.  But  his  range,  in  the  one  hundred  and  five 
plays  produced  in  thirty  years,  must  have  covered  every 
detail  of  Attic  life  and  sentiment.  We  are  grateful  to 
him  that  he  seems  to  have  kept  his  pen  away  from  the 
cancer.  The  moralizing  extracts  of  Stobseus,  the  cyclo- 
pedic interest  of  Athenseus  in  the  surface  of  things, 
these  and  a  few  other  preserving  factors  are  too  narrow 
to  permit  much  real  grasp  of  the  plots  of  these  perished 
plays.  It  is  clear  that  the  variety  of  his  themes  was  vast, 
and  that  the  strains  of  social  interests  were  equally  catholic 
and  comprehensive :  —  "  The  Brothers,"  "  The  Fisher- 
men," "  The  Girl  from  Messenia,"  "  The  Girl  from 
Andros,"  "The  Man- woman  or  the  Cretan,"  "The 
Cousins,"  "  The  Distrustful  Man,"  "  The  Arrephoros 
(carrying  certain  sacred  objects  in  procession),  or  The 
Flutegirl,"  "The  Shield,"  "The  Self-mourner,"  "The 
Feast  of  Aphrodite,"  "The  Boeotian  Woman,"  "The 
Farmer,"  "The  Ring,"  "The  Craftsman,"  "The  Twin 
Girls,"  "The  Grumpy  Man,"  "The  Self- tormentor," 
"The  Heiress,"  "The  Eunuch,"  "The  Man  from 
Ephesos,"  "Thais,"  "The  Woman  from  Thessaly,"  "The 
Girl  Possessed,"  "  The  Treasure,"  "  Mr.  Lionbold,"  "  The 
Priestess,"  "  The  Men  from  Imbros,"  "  The  Groom  "  (or 
Stableman),  "  The  Basket-bearing  Girl "  (of  sacred  pro- 
cession), "  The  Carian  Woman,"  (professional  mourner), 
"  The  Carthaginian,"  "  The  Woman's  Headdress,"  "  The 
Lyre-player,"  "The  Woman  from  Knidos,"  "The  Flat- 
terer," "The  Pilots,"  "Drunkenness,"  "The  Woman- 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          259 

hater,"  "The  Ship  Owner,"  "The  Legislator,"  "The 
Woman  from  Olynthos,"  "Wrath,"  "The  Babe,"  "The 
Concubine,"  "  The  Woman  from  Perinthos,"  and  others. 


A  mirror  of  Attic  life,  I  said.  Life  of  the  cultured 
classes,  in  the  main.  But  we  harvest  little;  we  glean,  in 
this  field,  merely  a  few  ears,  or  grains  even. 

Everything  in  the  plots  and  plays  seemed  to  revolve 
around  the  family.  The  son  and  heir  yields  to  his  appe- 
tites, and  is  entangled  in  some  intrigue  with  a  courtesan 
or  mistress.  His  former  paidagogos  slave  is  his  chief 
counsellor  in  the  ever  recurring  task  of  outwitting  the 
suspicious  father,  or  in  raising  money  for  such  amours,  or 
in  postponing  the  inevitable  day  when  his  father  presents 
him  with  a  marriage  pact  arranged  and  made  for  him. 
The  essential  disruption  and  demoralization  of  filial  vir- 
tues is  the  chief  and  salient  feature  of  these  plays.  Love 
is  chiefly  appetite,  and  romance,  if  romance  there  be,  is 
perhaps  this,  that  the  girl  to  which  the  stripling  clings 
awhile,  is  really  an  Attic  girl,  shipwrecked  once,  or  ex- 
posed, but  saved :  when  ring  or  bauble  aid  in  the  task  of 
identification. 

When  fathers  utter  their  woes  or  worries,  their  point 
of  judgment  rests  merely  or  mainly  on  profit  and  loss, 
social  or  pecuniary  disadvantage :  the  moral  judgment  is 
drifting  on  the  ocean  of  life  without  compass,  rudder,  or 
chart. 

Woman,  mother  or  daughter  of  Attic  citizens,  appears 
in  narrow  spheres.  The  mother,  particularly,  unless  she 
is  a  great  heiress,  is  presented  almost  invariably,  in  a 
humiliating  fashion.  Menander,  it  is  true,  takes  a  certain 
delight  in  bringing  into  final  discomfiture  easy-going 
moralists,  fathers  such  as  Chremes  in  the  "  Self-tor- 
mentor," or  Mikion  in  the  "  Brothers."  Be  easy  with 
your  son,  be  diplomatic,  close  your  eyes  at  the  right  time, 
open  your  purse,  remember  your  own  youth.  Still  fathers 
are  entitled  to  some  consideration. 

"Scortari    crebro    nolunt,   nolunt   crebro   convivarier," 


260  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

these  things  may  be  done  in  moderation,  but  the  drafts 
upon  the  father's  purse  must  not  be  excessive. 

The  same  self-complacent  philosopher,  when  he  realizes 
how  wasteful  his  son's  intrigues  are,  determines  to  make 
him  the  pensioner  of  the  proposed  son-in-law,  and  turns 
furious  and  desperate. 

This  same  gentleman's  demeanor  to  his  wife  is  rudeness 
and  contempt.  The  poor  lady,  in  turn,  fairly  falls  at  his 
feet,  when  she  confesses  that  she  found  it  hard  to  have 
her  baby  daughter  perish  by  exposure  ("  Hauton  Tiinor- 
umenos,"  626  9qq.^).  "  You  remember  that  I  was  pregnant 
and  that  you  laid  down  the  law  to  me  very  strongly,  that 
if  I  were  to  give  birth  to  a  girl,  you  did  not  want  it  reared? 
Chr ernes:  I  know  what  you  did:  you  reared  it.  Sostrata: 
Oh  no,  no ;  but  there  was  here  an  old  Corinthian  woman, 
not  so  bad :  to  her  I  gave  (the  babe)  to  expose.  Chremes: 
O  Zeus,  the  idea  that  you  should  be  so  stupid!  Sostrata: 
lam  undone.  What  have  I  done?  Chremes:  You  ask? 
Sostrata:  If  I  have  done  wrong,  my  dear  Chremes,  I  did 
it  unwittingly.  Chremes :  Indeed  I  know  that  matter 
indeed,  for  sure,  if  you  were  to  deny  it,  that  unwittingly 
and  without  being  aware  of  it,  you  say  and  do  everything: 
so  many  misdeeds  you  exhibit  in  this  matter.  For  now, 
in  the  first  place,  if  you  had  been  willing  to  carry  out  my 
orders,  you  should  have  killed  her,  not  pretend  death  with 
words,  actually,  however,  to  give  hope  to  life.  But  I  pass 
that  by:  pity,  a  mother's  feeling;  I  let  it  go.  But  how 
well  you  carried  out  my  will,  reflect  on  that.  For  aban- 
doned to  that  old  woman  by  thee  was  our  daughter,  down- 
right so,  I  tell  you,  as  far  as  you  were  concerned,  that 
either  she  should  become  a  professional  courtesan,  or  sold 
into  slavery  openly.  I  suppose  your  thought  was  this  : 
*  anything  at  all  is  better,  if  only  she  live.'  .  .  .  Sostrata: 
My  dear  Chremes,  I  have  done  wrong,  I  confess  it,  I  am 
defeated.  Now  I  make  this  entreaty:  since  your  spirit, 
my  dear  husband,  is  naturally  more  prone  to  forgiveness, 
that  there  be  some  protection  for  my  folly  in  your  love  of 
justice.  .  .  ."  But  enough  of  this.  The  gloom  and  misery 
of  the  Attic  woman's  apartment  was  rarely  illumined,  and 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          261 

then  by  some  religious  anniversary  or  celebration  rather  — 
for  if  we  were  to  call  Decoration  Day  or  Fourth  of  July, 
with  us,  in  the  United  States,  religion,  it  would  not  be 
very  apt,  as  we  feel  the  import  of  the  word.  The  Attic 
lady  was  not  given  to  read  Plato  or  ponder  on  the  match- 
less symmetry  of  domestic  sculpture :  the  futilities  of  the 
toilet  filled  her  life,  too.  The  husband  of  your  typical 
heiress  was  largely  concerned  with  settling  tradesmen's  or 
shopkeepers'  bills :  "  Now  wherever  you  come,  more  car- 
riages you  may  see  in  (the  courts  of)  mansions  than  in  the 
country  when  you  visit  your  farmhouse.  But  this  also  is 
a  fair  thing,  far  more  so  than  when  they  demand  expendi- 
tures. There  stands  the  fuller,  purple-dyer,  goldsmith, 
linen-draper  :  the  restaurant-keepers,  embroiderers,  upper- 
tunic  makers,  bridal-veil  makers,  dyers  in  violet,  dyers  of 
wax  yellow,  long  sleeve-makers,  or  perfumers,  the  sitting 
shoemakers,  slipper-makers,  the  sole-makers  wait,  the 
makers  of  woman's  robes  from  mallow-fibre,  the  baggage- 
carriers  want  their  pay,  the  bosom-band  makers  wait,  the 
makers  of  half -belts  are  waiting.  At  last  you  may  think 
they  are  despatched.  Endless  the  string  of  watchmen  in 
the  pillared  courts  :  the  weavers,  border-makers,  the  manu- 
facturers of  little  jewel-cases.  .  .  ."  (Plautus,  "Aulula- 
ria,"  505  sqq.*). 

We  must  not  pass  on  without  noting  the  bald  fact  that 
the  procurer  throughout  the  Greek  world  on  both  sides  of 
the  ^Egean  plied  his  trade  in  buying,  selling,  or  exchanging 
his  wares,  even  by  the  cargo,  according  to  local  market 
demands,  and  that  he  made  time-contracts  in  legal  form, 
and  further  that  the  governments  everywhere  enforced 
these  contracts,  as  they  did  the  others. 

I  cannot  dwell  on  these  things  any  further. 

The  New  Comedy,  I  have  said,  presents  Attic  civilization 
old  and  in  a  way  finished:  it  has  indeed  reached  a  certain 
consummation.  Its  presentation  of  decay  is  more  cool  and 
deliberate,  when  we  study  extracts  from  Philemon  or 
Menander  dealing  with  mockery  of  philosophy  and  philos- 
ophers, with  the  problems  of  Fate  and  Tyche  (Fortune  — 
Accident),  Providence,  the  Social  order,  worship,  the 


262  TESTIMOXIUM  ANDLE 

value  of  Life.  Through  it  all  runs,  like  a  red  thread,  the 
Attic  love  for  problems,  and  the  pruritus  disputandi, 
the  nimble  readiness  to  enter  upon  any  subject  whatever 
in  a  dialectic  and  discursive  way.  The  fact  is,  Menander 
is  the  new  Euripides,  but  there  is  all  over  him  a  calm  and 
a  withholding  of  his  inner  man,  quite  different  from  the 
restlessness  and  querulousness  of  the  older  dramatist. 
Otherwise,  both  pursue  that  which  Matthew  Arnold 
(quite  absurdly)  ascribed  to  Greekdom  at  large,  "  to  let 
their  intelligence  play  around  everything."  Plato  had 
attempted  to  determine  the  essence  of  the  Good.  But 
clearly  it  was  caviary  to  the  Athenian  Philistine.  "  Just 
as  Aristotle  always  used  to  relate  (viz.,  to  his  students) 
the  experience  of  those  who  heard  Plato's  lecture  or  Course 
about  the  Good;  for  every  one  approached  him  assuming 
that  he  would  get  something  about  the  conventional  human 
goods.  But  when  the  discourse  appeared  as  dealing  with 
learning,  with  numbers,  and  with  geometry  and  astronomy 
and  the  Finite,  that  the  Good  is  one,  I  believe  it  utterly 
impressed  them  as  odd." 

As  to  the  grief  of  that  community  for  the  execution  of 
Socrates,  I  am  sceptical.  Was  that  great  character  really 
ennobled  in  Attic  concern  ?  More  than  fifty  years  after 
the  philosopher  had  drunk  the  hemlock  administered  by 
the  Athenians  (in  345  B.C.),  the  politician  jEschines  re- 
ferred to  Socrates  as  the  well-known  "  Sophist,"  whom  the 
people  once  made  responsible  for  Kritias  ("contr.  Ti- 
march,"  173). 

"  The  philosophers  inquire,  as  I  have  heard,  and  on  this 
they  consume  away  much  time  —  What  is  Good,  and 
not  one  has  yet  found  what  it  is.  Virtue  and  Intelligence, 
they  say  and  they  name  everything  rather  than  What  is 
the  Good"  (Philemon,  Fragm.  67).  As  for  the  essence 
of  the  supreme  God:  "  He  whom  no  man  deceives  in  any- 
thing he  does,  nor  in  that  he  will  do,  nor  what  he  has  done 
long  ago,  nor  God  nor  man,  this  am  I,  Air,  whom  also  one 
might  name  Zeus.  And  I  (a  God's  achievement  this)  am 
everywhere,  here  in  Athens,  in  Patrai,  in  Sicily,  in  all  the 
towns,  in  all  the  domiciles,  and  in  you  all:  there  is  no  place 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          263 

where  Air  is  not;  and  the  omnipresent  must  needs  know 
all  things  for  his  being  everywhere  "  (Philemon,  Fragm. 
84).  A  slave,  it  seems,  is  the  speaker  in  the  following 
passage  dealing  with  universal  dependency:  "For  one  man 
is  my  master,  but  of  these  and  thee  and  others  number- 
less, 'tis  law;  of  others,  autocrats,  and  these  have  for  their 
master,  Fear :  slaves  are  the  possession  of  kings,  the  Kings, 
of  gods,  and  God,  of  Necessity  "  (Fragm.  31) :  we  see  the 
fundamental  ideas  of  the  Homeric  world  still  prevailing. 
And  Homer  still  is  the  poet  incomparable  (Fragm.  93).  On 
the  problem  of  that  which  we  would  call  conscience :  "  For 
whosoever  of  himself  is  not  ashamed,  himself  that  conscious 
is  (ffweiSdra)  of  having  perpetrated  evil  things :  how  will  he 
be  ashamed  of  him  that  knoweth  nought  ?  "  (Fragm.  146). 
Attic  soil  was  thin  and  poor:  we  seem  to  hear  the 
tiller's  voice  as  to  the  niggardliness  of  Earth :  "  with  diffi- 
culty, barely,  as  in  debt  the  principal,  doth  she  pay  the 
seed,  but  interest  she  robs,  forever  devising  some  pretext, 
to  wit,  some  drought  or  killing  frost"  (Fragm.  86).  Still 
more  keenly  pessimistic  is  this  utterance :  "  O  blessed 
thrice  and  thrice  endowed  with  wealth  the  beasts,  who  of 
these  things  hold  no  discourse,  nor  any  of  them  resorteth  to 
convincing  proof,  nor  have  they  any  other  evil  of  this  kind 
brought  from  abroad;  but  nature  such  as  each  brings  on, 
this  straightway  also  has  for  law.  But  we,  mankind,  we 
live  a  life  not  worth  the  living  (aftiwrov  /3iov) ;  we  are  en- 
slaved to  opinions,  statutes  have  we  found,  in  thraldom  to 
our  ancestors  and  to  our  offspring.  There  is  no  way  of 
missing  trouble,  but  ever  some  pretext  we  do  devise  " 
(Fragm.  90).  We  see  there  were  Rousseaus  before 
Rousseau.  The  essence  of  moral  goodness  is  freedom: 
we  append  these  lines,  which  do  credit  to  Philemon's 
judgment:  "A  righteous  man  is  not  he  who  does  no 
wrong:  but  he  who  can  do  wrong,  and  does  not  will  it; 
nor  he  who  did  refrain  from  taking  petty  loot,  but  he  who 
takes  his  stand  like  steel,  not  taking  large  things,  who 
could  possess  and  hold  control,  and  know  no  loss ;  nor  he 
all  these  things  maintains  alone,  but  he  who  has  a  nature 
free  from  guile,  both  righteous  will  be  and  seem  to  be  " 


264  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

(Fragm.  92).  Fine  lines,  I  trust  my  clerical  readers  will 
admit,  if  such  readers  I  may  have.  These  may  be  in- 
terested to  learn  that  Hugo  Grotius,  in  his  day  deeply 
impressed  with  their  lofty  moral  tone,  claimed  for  them 
Christian  authorship.  As  for  G-od  and  his  essence  —  God, 
mind  you,  not  gods  —  we  owe  the  following  to  Stobseus 
too:  "  Believe  in  God,  and  worship  him,  but  do  not  search; 
for  nothing  but  the  searching  hath  thou  for  thy  pains. 
Whether  he  be,  or  be  not,  do  not  wish  to  learn,  as  being 
do  thou  worship  him  and  ever  being  by  "(Fragm.  112). 

And  now  for  Menander.  We  have  many  reasons  for 
believing  that  this  literary  leader  held  a  philosophy  not 
differing  greatly  from  that  of  his  friend  and  fellow-pupil 
Epicurus.  "  For  good  men  Intelligence  is  god,  ye  wisest 
of  the  wise  "  (Fragm.  14).  "  Fair  reasoning  —  all  things 
are  sacred  for  it :  for  Intelligence  is  the  god  who  will 
give  utterance"  (Fragm.  71).  Even  more  do  we  feel 
the  affinity  in  the  following  lines  :  "  Ever  do  thou  drive 
out  of  life  the  thing  that  doth  annoy ;  our  span  of  life  is 
little  and  a  narrow  time*  we  live  "  (Fragm.  401).  Be 
master  of  thy  soul  :  "  a  human  being  as  thou  art  never 
demands  from  gods  the  painless  state,  but  enduring  spirit. 
For  if  thou  wouldest  painless  be  throughout,  thou  either 
must  be  God  or  soon  a  corpse.  Console  thyself  for  thy 
evils  through  alien  evils"  (536).  But  again:  "While 
all  mankind  by  nature  many  evils  has,  pain  is  the  greatest 
evil"  (642).  " 

Reserve  in  judging  of  riches  :  "  A  sightless  thing  is 
wealth,  and  blind  it  renders  those  that  fix  their  gaze 
upon  itself  "  (83).  "  Of  wealth  thou  talkest,  unabiding 
thing.  For  if  thou  knowest  that  these  things  Witt 
remain  with  thee  for  all  the  time,  guard  it,  give 
no  share  of  it  to  any  other,  thyself  its  master ;  but  if 
not  your  own,  but  all  you  hold  as  fortune's  fief,  why 
shouldest  thou  begrudge,  my  father,  any  one  of  these," 
etc.  (130).  "I  thought  the  rich,  friend  Phanias,  who 
know  not  borrowing,  they  did  not  groan  of  nights,  nor 
tossed  on  their  couch  and  uttered  cries  of  woe,  but 
slept  a  sleep  of  sweetness  and  of  calm,  —  but  beggars 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          265 

did  these  former  things.  But  now  I  see  that  you  too 
whom  they  call  the  rich,  are  troubled  just  as  we.  Is 
there,  then,  some  affinity  'twixt  pain  and  Life  ?  It  dwells 
with  life  luxurious,  abideth  with  a  life  of  high  renown, 
it  groweth  gray  in  equal  pace  with  poor  man's  life " 
(274).  "None  did  enrich  himself  with  speed  and  hold 
to  righteousness  ;  one  gathers  for  himself  and  stints  ;  the 
other  lies  in  ambush  for  the  one  who  guards  it  all  along, 
and  thus  with  one  fell  swoop  he  holds  it  all." 

Menander  never  married,  and  his  whole  philosophy  is 
counter  to  the  troubles  of  matrimony,  to  the  anxieties  of 
paternity.  "  You'll  marry  not,  if  you  have  sense,  and 
leave  this  life  behind  ;  for  I  myself  have  wed  ;  therefore 
I  warn  you  not  to  marry.  B.  Decided  is  the  matter :  let 
the  die  be  cast.  A.  Complete  it,  then.  May  you  be 
saved  now.  Into  a  veritable  sea  you'll  plunge,  of  troubles, 
not  Af ric,  not  ^gean  Sea :  where  of  thirty  craft  not 
three  are  saved ;  but  not  a  single  one  who  married,  has 
ever  had  complete  salvage  "  (66).  "  What  sort  of  thing 
it  proved  to  be,  to  become  the  father  of  children  !  pain, 
fear,  concern,  nor  is  there  any  consummation"  (408).  To 
which  we  add  the  bitter  sneer :  "  The  mother  loves  her 
offspring  more  than  father  does :  she  knows  her  son  to 
be  her  own,  and  father  merely  doth  suppose  "  (631). 

The  old  cry  and  question  :  is  Life  worth  living  ?  is  man 
really  the  crown  and  apex  of  this  world  of  being  ?  this  old 
problem  of  the  pessimist  seems  to  have  not  rarely  been 
discussed  in  that  weary  and  surfeited  civilization.  Thus 
we  read  :  "  If  of  the  gods  one  should  approach  and  say  : 
'  Kraton,  when  you  have  died,  you  will  again  exist,  from 
the  beginning ;  and  you  will  be  whatever  you  do  choose, 
a  dog,  a  sheep,  a  goat,  a  man,  a  horse  ;  for  two  times  must 
thou  live,  for  this  is  fate's  decree,  choose  what  you  will. 
.  .  .  All  things  rather ' — I  think  I  then  would  promptly 
say,  'make  me  but  human  being ;  this  animal  alone  is 
wrongly  prosperous,  and  wrongly  fares  it  ill.  The  finest 
horse  has  more  careful  keep  than  other ;  if  thou  be  a  good 
dog,  more  honored  art  by  far  than  worthless  cur.  A  high- 
bred cock  has  other  feeding,  but  the  low-bred  even  fears 


266  TESTIMONIUM  ANIMffl 

the  finer  one.  If  a  man  be  good,  well-born,  of  great  no- 
bility, it  helps  him  nothing  in  the  present  generation,  best 
fares  the  flatterer,  blackmailer  next,'  "  etc.,  etc.  (222).  A 
similar  note :  "  Him  deem  I  favored  most  of  fortune,  who 
speedily  departs  to  whence  he  came,  when  he  has  viewed 
these  things  of  majesty :  the  common  sun,  the  stars,  and 
water,  clouds,  and  fire  ;  for  even  if  thou  livest  a  hundred 
years,  these  always  will  thou  see  abiding  by:  and  if  thy  life 
be  but  a  narrow  span  of  years,  more  stately  than  these 
thou  never  wilt  behold  "  (470). 

What  of  worship,  then?  "As  the  house-breaker's 
sacrifice,  bearing  along  couches,  jars  of  wine,  not  for  the 
gods'  sake,  but  their  own  ;  the  incense  belongs  to  piety, 
and  the  sacrificial  cake  here  the  god  received,  cake  wholly 
laid  upon  the  fire  ;  but  they  lay  upon  (the  fire)  the  edge 
of  thighbone  and  the  gall  and  bones  they  cannot  eat,  for 
the  gods,  and  they  themselves  always  gulp  down  the  rest " 
(131).  The  essential  point  of  a  thoughtful  critique  of 
popular  religion  is  well  presented  in  the  following  lines  : 
"  No  god  saves  one  man  through  the  other,  woman !  for  if 
with  cymbals  man  drags  the  god  to  what  he  wills,  then  he 
who  does  this  overtops  the  god.  But  these  are  instru- 
ments of  livelihood  and  daring,  designed  by  shameless  men, 
Rhode  dear,  and  formed  for  laughing  stock  of  human  life." 
Thus  on  the  Attic  stage :  perhaps  of  private  or  foreign 
sacrifices,  but  really,  the  judgments  seem  to  be  sweeping 
and  universal  ("  Men.,"  Fragm.  237).  Still  bolder  the  fol- 
lowing ritual  on  the  stage,  a  very  part  of  the  play :  "  Liba- 
tion!—  (you  keep  behind  me  and  hand  me  the  entrails; 
whither  do  you  glance  ? )  Libation !  (slave  Sosias  bring 
on!)  Libation!  (very  good,  pour  in).  Let  us  pray  to 
all  the  gods  and  goddesses  of  Olympus  (take  the  tongue 
in  this,  d'ye  hear)  to  give  salvation,  health,  many  blessings, 
fruition  of  now  existing  blessings  to  all ;  this  let  us  pray 
for"  (287).  A  scene,  as  we  learn  from  the  excerptor 
Athenseus  (659,  d),  occurring  at  the  celebration  in  honor 
of  Aphrodite  Pandemos,  in  Athens.  Men  were  more  tied 
down  to  attendance  on  ritual  after  they  married,  that  is, 
their  wives  would  certainly  go  and  there  was  no  other 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          267 

escort  but  the  husband :  "  The  gods  grind  us  to  powder, 
us  mainly  who  have  wed,  for  always  is  there  need  to  keep 
some  festival.  We  sacrificed  five  times  a  day  and  seven 
servant  maids  encircling  the  timbrels  rang  again."  Strabo 
the  excerptor  suggests  that  it  was  the  expense  that  was  so 
ruinous  for  the  married  man  ("Men.,"  317).  Nowhere 
do  we  gain  a  closer  vision.  Another  view :  "  Then,  how 
we  fare  and  how  we  sacrifice,  'tis  not  alike.  When  for  the 
gods  I  bring  a  small  sheep  (enough  for  them),  purchased 
for  ten  drachmas  (81.80),  flute  girls  and  ointment,  harper 
women,  and  wine  from  Mende,  Thasos,  eels,  cheese,  and 
honey,  the  total  sum  amounts  to  a  small  talent  (I  read 
[UKpov  TaXavroy),  'tis  worth  our  while  to  get  a  blessing  for 
ten  drachmas  if  also  well-omen'd  sacrifice  has  been  made 
for  gods:  but  to  consume  the  killing  cost  of  these  in  add- 
ing to  the  other  —  how  is  not  the  misery  of  the  sacrifices 
doubled?  "  (308).  Compare  also  St.  Paul,  1  Cor.  8,  4  sqq. 

And  now  for  Providence  and  Plan  of  world  and  life. 
"  Do  you  believe  that  the  gods  have  so  much  leisure 
as  to  assign  to  each  one  their  daily  trouble  or  blessing  ?  " 
(176).  "  Chance  I  dare  say  it  seems  is  god,  and  he  doth 
save  many  of  the  things  which  none  perceive "  (284). 
Again:  "Do  stop,  ye  who  have  sense;  for  man's  intelli- 
gence is  no  more,  nor  aught,  than  Chance,  whether  this  be 
breath  divine  or  be  intelligence.  This  'tis  that  pilots  every- 
thing and  twists  and  saves,  but  Providence  of  mortality 
is  smoke  and  empty  talk.  Believe  me  and  do  not  cen- 
sure me :  all  that  we  think  or  say  or  do,  is  chance  .  .  ." 
(461).  "O  man,  sigh  not  nor  grieve  excessively.  The 
money,  wife  and  offspring  —  many  children,  which  chance 
has  loaned  thee,  these  it  took  away  "  (559). 

"Impossible  that  there  exists  a  palpable  body  of  chance; 
but  he  who  did  not  bear  his  affairs  conforming  to  nature, 
he  dubb'd  as  Chance  what  was  his  own  bent  of  character  " 
(561).  

But  a  friend  of  Menander  builded  and  joined  together 
a  philosophy  —  a  system  of  thought,  which  mirrored  the 
declining  generations  of  Hellenism  and  endured  long, 


268  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

Epicurus.  A  quietism  this  system,  quite  different  from 
that  of  Port  Royal,  in  Pascal's  time,  but  still  a  philosophy 
of  rest,  of  a  search  after  rest  and  after  a  soul  unperturbed. 
Epicurus  (341-270)  was  the  son  of  a  poor  schoolmaster. 
The  latter  went  to  Samos  to  get  a  land-allotment  there. 
The  bitter  sneer  and  the  professional  vanity  deeply  bound 
up  with  academic  careers  has  added  some  dusky  splashes 
to  the  portrait  of  Epicurus  handed  down  by  the  Greek 
world.  Some  later  Stoic  scholars  told  of  him,  that  as  a 
young  lad  he  went  about  with  his  mother  to  the  dwellings 
of  the  poor  and  recited  formulae  of  religious  purification 
(/ca#a/3/W):  he  who  made  it  his  life  work  to  disestablish 
and  destroy  what  power  popular  religion  and  traditional 
cults  had  on  the  souls  of  the  Hellenic  world.  After  try- 
ing his  pinions  for  didactic  flight  in  several  towns  of  Asia 
Minor,  he  settled  himself  at  Athens  and  gathered  around 
his  person  a  school  of  fervid  adherents,  in  306  B.C.  A 
little  more  than  for  a  generation  he  was  the  first  head  of 
the  school  named  after  him.  A  little  park  ("garden") 
outside  of  the  walls  he  purchased  for  eighty  minae.  It 
remained  in  the  possession  of  the  school,  and  was  one  of 
the  spots  shown  the  traveller.  Critical  and  contemptuous 
as  was  the  attitude  of  the  Epicurean  schools  towards  all 
theses  non-materialistic  or  purely  dialectical,  your  genuine 
follower  of  the  Garden  learned  by  heart  the  master's  chief 
tenets.  The  "chief  tenets,"  or  "sovereign  precepts "(jcvpiai 
SO'£CM),  were  inculcated  and  transmitted  like  a  catechism 
of  positive  revelation.  We  have  reason  to  believe  that 
the  school  found  its  best  bulwark  in  ignoring,  or  in  genuine 
ignorance  of,  other  schools. 

Even  in  his  life,  he  was  idolized  by  his  sect :  and  the 
twentieth  Gamelion  was  a  high  holiday  :  every  twentieth 
was  an  Epicurean  sabbath.  For  his  people  saw  in  him 
not  a  great  investigator  of  scientific  facts,  not  a  great  dia- 
lectic hero,  not  a  brilliant  author  —  he  was  none  of  these 

—  but  a  spiritual  deliverer  and  saviour  —  if  I  may  use  the 
noble  term  to  elucidate  the  warm  admiration  of  his  fold 

—  a   veritable   saviour  of  souls,  they  claimed,  from  the 
yoke  and  thraldom  of  Fear,  Care,  and  Unrest. 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          269 

He  borrowed  heavily  from  the  tenets  of  Demokritos  of 
Abdera  —  greatest  investigator  of  actual  phenomena  before 
Aristotle.  Demokritos  lived  from  460  B.C.  to  beyond 
373,  a  man  of  large  mould  —  never  mentioned  by  Plato, 
whose  antipathies  for  the  Abderite's  uncompromising  ma- 
terialism and  mechanism  were  stirred  and  wounded  to  the 
quick.  But  Aristotle  studied  him  critically.  Demokritos 
taught  in  his  "Diakosmos"  (Survey  of  the  Universe) 
that  all  being  was  resolvable  into  the  two  principles  of  the 
Atoms  and  Vacuum  :  both  infinite  and  eternal.  There 
is  no  evolution  out  of  nothing,  but  matter  is  eternal. 
The  atoms  constitute  things  living  or  otherwise  —  through 
contact,  and  their  position  and  combination  account  for 
all  concrete  things.  The  spherical  movement  of  atoms  is 
from  eternity.  All  life  so-called  is  but  a  transitory  com- 
bination of  atoms.  It  is  futile  to  ask  after  the  Why  and 
Whither  of  our  world  :  there  is  but  one  object  of  our  con- 
cern, viz.,  necessity. 

"  The  men  of  old,  beholding  the  phenomena  of  the  sky 
(ra  ev  rot?  /*erea>/jot9  Tra^/Aara),  such  as  thunder,  lightning, 
and  thunderbolts,  and  the  meeting  of  celestial  bodies, 
eclipses  of  sun  and  moon,  were  filled  with  fear,  believing 
that  the  gods  were  the  causes  of  these  things "  ("  Sext. 
Emp.  adv.  Mathem.,"  9,  24).  There  are  innumerable 
worlds  made  in  time  and  perishable. 

Sweet  and  Bitter,  Hot  and  Cold,  Colors  all  —  these 
things  or  qualities  are  merely  subjective  and  by  human 
convention.  We  do  not  indeed  know  anything  infallibly 
and  actually,  but  are  only  aware  of  physical  changes  or 
dispositions  in  ourselves.  And  still  he  postulated  an  image 
or  perception  of  things  true  and  genuine  :  while  the  image 
furnished  by  sight,  hearing,  smell,  taste,  and  touch  is 
darkish  or  obscure  (jncorCrf). 

Water,  Air,  and  Earth  are  developed  one  from  the  other. 
There  is  a  homogeneous  material  relation  between  the 
perceiving  and  the  perceived,  an  affinity  of  substance. 
Combination  and  dissolution  make  birth  and  death,  re- 
arrangement of  position  of  atoms  makes  that  which  men 
call  change.  But  enough  to  point  to  the  fountain  from 


270  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

which  the  philosopher  of  the  Garden  drew  his  beakers 
of  the  beverage  of  wisdom. 

Your  follower  of  the  Garden  was  not  asked  to  study 
first  geometry  and  logic,  empirical,  psychological,  or  lit- 
erary criticism.  Erudition  as  erudition  was  tabooed.  I 
had  almost  said  shooed  from  the  Garden. 

Consider  the  aim  (reXo?).  This  system  did  not  propose 
to  rival  with  the  scholarship  and  with  the  science  of  the 
Lyceum.  The  claim  was  that  they  aimed  at  the  high- 
est thing  in  this  world  and  in  this  life  :  simply  Happi- 
ness—  as  all  living  beings  did  —  it  was  both  the  Unity 
and  the  Truth  of  living.  A  school  of  Happiness  at  one 
(in  this  striving)  with  the  Universe  and  with  all  History 
and  all  experience.  Futile  is  mathematics :  it  contrib- 
utes nothing  towards  accomplishing  this  wisdom  of 
Happiness.  The  learned  labors  of  astronomers  are  fit 
for  slaves,  drudgery  contributing  nothing  to  Happiness. 
Definitions,  Classifications,  and  Syllogisms  are  mere  lum- 
ber of  the  schools. 

Even  the  study  of  Nature  as  matter  propelled  by  purely 
mechanical  causes  —  even  this  were  worthless  and  dis- 
pensable, did  it  not  contribute  so  decisively  to  Happiness 
and  thus  to  the  Aim  of  Living.  And  here  we  have 
crushed  the  shell  and  come  upon  the  kernel  of  the  nut : 
"After  all  these  things  (viz.,  the  purely  materialistic 
exposition  of  the  phenomena  of  the  sky)  we  must  per- 
fectly comprehend  that  the  most  sovereign  disturbance 
realized  in  human  souls  lies  in  this,  that  people  opine 
those  things  (the  phenomena  of  the  sky)  to  be  blessed 
(/ta/ca/jm,  Diog.  Laer.,  10,  81)  and  that  (people)  have 
desires  and  at  the  same  time  both  doings  and  motives 
which  are  set  against  (this  belief)  —  and  in  this,  that 
men  always  look  forward  to  something  awful  of  eternal 
duration  or  suspect  it  in  accordance  with  the  myths, 
dreading  also  the  non-sentient  condition  which  is  in- 
herent in  being  dead  (jrjv  avaiffOrjcrlav  rrjv  ev  TW  reOvdvaC), 
as  though  it  had  any  bearing  on  them.  ..." 

There  are  no  underlying  causes  other  than  those  of 
matter  :  the  chief  function  of  philosophy  as  well  as  of 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          271 

all  other  processes  of  research  is  this  :  to  eliminate,  nay, 
to  eradicate,  those  fanciful  opinions  that  "frighten  the 
others  to  the  uttermost"  ($.,  82). 

This  peace  of  soul,  then,  Epicurus  promises  to  his  sect,  a 
boon  that  mere  erudition  and  all  its  works  cannot  accom- 
plish or  bestow.  It  is  to  this  end  that  "  genuine  Nature- 
love,"  that  the  Atomistic  speculation  is  really  directed. 

Phrases  like  these  were  ever  recurrent  in  the  numerous 
works  of  this  thinker:  "  The  Imperturbability  of  the  soul," 
"  Freedom  from  disturbance  and  from  pain,"  "  Freedom 
from  annoyance,"  "  Blessed  life,"  "  Imperturbability  and 
firm  Faith,"  "  to  live  without  disturbance,"  "  genuine 
Imperturbability. " 

As  one's  comfortable  state  of  being  is  the  principal 
consideration  of  the  wise  man,  it  is  clear  that  the  con- 
cerns of  others  cannot,  nay,  must  not,  be  brought  over- 
much to  our  attention. 

Pleasure,  indeed,  and  its  various  categories,  at  once 
looms  up  into  great  prominence.  It  is  not  the  longest 
but  the  pleasantest  life  that  we  should  prize  most. 

Of  the  desires  (127),  some  are  natural  and  others 
empty,  and  of  the  natural,  some  are  necessary  and  some 
are  merely  natural.  Of  the  necessary  ones,  some  are  nec- 
essary towards  happiness,  others,  for  the  disannoyance 
of  physical  man,  and  still  others  for  life  itself.  It  is  for 
men  to  determine  what  to  choose  and  avoid  (cupea-is  teal 
$1/777).  But  the  best  part  of  this  book  is  to  consist  in  the 
presentation  of  material  for  the  reader's  own  induction. 
I  do  not  desire  to  substitute  my  measure  of  judgment  for 
the  reader's  own. 

Let  us  hear  the  scholarchos  of  the  Garden  still  further 
on  this  central  theme.  "  We  do  everything  for  the  sake 
of  this,  viz.  (128),  that  we  may  feel  neither  pain  nor  suffer 
fear." 

Pleasure  we  recognized  (viz.,  in  all  human  experience) 
(129)  as  the  first  good  and  kindred  to  us ;  ...  "  Some- 
times we  pass  over  many  pleasures,  whenever  greater  an- 
noyance follows  from  these.  ..."  Living,  wise  conduct, 
we  see,  is  largely  an  experience  in  weighing  and  testing, 


272  TESTIMONIUM  AXDLE 

in  sifting  and  selecting,  in  avoiding  and  declining.     It  is 
the  system  of  the  Ego. 

The  greatest  pleasure  is  afforded,  in  the  enjoyment  of 
luxury  (130),  to  those  who  are  least  in  need  of  it,  and 
"because  all  that  is  natural  is  easily  provided,  but  the 
boon  of  vain  conceit  is  provided  with  difficulty.  ..." 
"  When,  then  (131),  we  say  that  pleasure  is  the  End  of 
living  (re'Xo?)  we  do  not  mean  the  pleasures  of  the  disso- 
lute and  those  pleasures  which  are  based  on  the  act  of 
enjoyment,  as  some  hold  in  their  ignorance  or  their  dis- 
agreement with  us,  or  taking  it  in  a  bad  sense,  but  the  not 
enduring  pain  in  the  body  nor  being  disturbed  in  the  soul ; 
for  not  drinking-bouts  nor  continuous  (132)  revelry,  nor 
the  enjoyment  of  boys  and  women,  nor  of  fish  and  the 
other  things  which  the  luxurious  table  bears,  not  these 
things  beget  the  pleasant  life,  but  a  computation  endowed 
with  sobriety  and  one  that  searches  down  for  the  causes 
of  every  choice  and  avoidance,  and  one  that  drives  out 
mere  opinions,  out  of  which  comes  most  of  the  disturb- 
ance that  lays  hold  of  souls.  ..." 


There  is  a  god  or  gods  in  the  system.  The  word 
"atheist"  was  intolerable  to  the  Greek  consciousness. 
The  Olympus,  indeed,  is  merely  a  snow-capped  geographi- 
cal point,  and  the  firmament  a  passing  configuration  of 
matter.  With  the  periodicity  of  celestial  bodies  the  god 
of  Epicurus  is  unconcerned:  "The  divine  nature  must 
not  by  any  means  be  brought  into  connection  with  these 
things,  but  it  shall  be  preserved  as  not  subject  to  service 
and  in  all  its  bliss"  (97). 

The  highest  bliss  is  in  possession  of  God  alone :  a  bliss 
(121)  incapable  of  any  increase.  "  God  (123)  is  a  being 
imperishable  and  blissful,  ...  do  not  ascribe  to  him  any- 
thing foreign  to  his  imperishable  essence,  nor  antagonistic 
to  his  Bliss.  Entertain  of  him  every  opinion  which  is 
able  to  maintain  Bliss  coupled  with  Incorruptibility. 

"  For  gods  there  are :  for  manifest  is  the  perception 
thereof.  But  such  as  the  Many  hold  them  they  are  not ; 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          273 

for  they  do  not  guard  of  them  the  character  in  which  they 
conceive  them,  ..."  (memorable  words  on  actual  Hel- 
lenic religion  and  worship  .  .  .  which  we  must  treasure). 
"And  impious  or  godless  (ao-e/y?/?)  is  not  he  who  does 
away  with  the  gods  of  the  many,  but  he  who  attaches  to 
the  gods  the  opinings  of  the  many  "(123).  But  gross 
as  were  the  myths  of  tradition,  Epicurus  would  rather  have 
and  hold  them  than  the  (Stoic)  conception  of  an  inexor- 
able Fate  of  Nature  (134).  God  is  utterly  unconcerned 
with  this  work  of  ours :  "  The  Blessed  and  the  Imperish- 
able neither  has  any  trouble  (Trpdypara)  itself,  nor  does  it 
cause  them  to  another  .  .  .  it  is  not  determined  by  Anger 
nor  by  Favor"  (139)  .  .  . 

Civil  righteousness  and  political  justice :  "  The  righteous- 
ness of  nature  is  a  contract  of  utility  that  men  shall  not 
injure  one  another  or  be  injured.  All  beings  (150)  that 
were  not  able  to  execute  this  treaty  (of  not  injuring  or 
being  injured)  to  these  the  principle  of  just  or  unjust  has 
no  application.  .  .  .  Justice  was  nothing  in  itself,  but 
in  the  mutual  agreements,  a  contract  in  given  localities, 
not  to  injure  or  be  injured." 

As  to  matrimony,  the  theory  of  the  Garden  was  in 
harmony  with  the  life  and  conduct  of  the  master.  Love- 
passion  the  wise  man  is  to  eschew  (118).  Sexual  life  is 
more  apt  to  be  injurious  than  beneficial.  As  a  rule  (119) 
the  sage  will  abstain  from  marriage  and  the  begetting  of 
children:  special  circumstances  only  will  cause  an  excep- 
tion. Political  life  he  will  avoid:  intolerable  physical 
suffering  he  will  terminate  by  his  own  act. 

Finally,  as  to  death,  the  end  of  all  and  all  to  the  philoso- 
phers of  the  Garden.  "Accustom  thyself  to  the  settled 
conviction  that  Death  (124)  is  nothing  to  us;  since  all 
good  and  evil  is  in  sense-perception:  and  deprivation  of 
sense-perception  is  death.  Hence  the  right  understanding 
of  the  fact  that  Death  is  nothing  to  us  renders  the  mortal- 
ity of  life  enjoyable,  not  in  adding  interminable  time,  but 
removing  the  craving  for  immortality.  For  (125)  there 
is  nothing  in  the  living  awful  for  him  who  has  genuinely 
seized  the  idea  that  there  is  nothing  awful  in  not-living. 


274  TESTIMONIUM  ANIALE 

Consequently  foolish  is  he  who  says  that  he  fears  death 
not  because  it  is  going  to  annoy  in  presence,  but  because 
it  is  now  troublesome  as  something  of  the  future  tense." 
Clearly  somewhat  oracular  here,  our  philosopher,  in  these 
epigrammatic  antitheses. 

His  own  last  Will  and  Testament  is  recorded  by  our  com- 
piler, Diogenes  Laertius,  16  sqq.  A  kindly  spirit  towards 
his  own  is  everywhere  apparent.  The  one  thing  (apart 
from  his  concern  for  the  preservation  of  his  own  name) 
that  puzzled  me  a  little  was  the  provision  that  enagismata 
were  to  be  brought  to  his  father  and  mother:  a  consoling 
periodical  sacrifice  to  the  shades  of  his  parents.  Obvious 
comments  are  unnecessary  for  the  intelligence  of  my 
readers. 

Some  three  hundred  and  seventy  years  after  the  death 
of  this  philosopher,  Plutarch  of  Chseronea  penned  these 
words :  "  but  that  visage  of  death,  visage  fearful  and  truc- 
ulent and  wrapped  in  darkness  which  all  secretly  dread, 
the  state  of  non-sentience,  and  of  oblivion  and  ignorance: 
and  at  the  phrases  '  He  has  perished,'  and  '  He  has  been 
taken  away  '  and  '  He  is  no  more '  they  are  disturbed  and 
are  ill  at  ease  when  these  things  are  said.  ..."  (Non 
posse  suaviter  vivi,  c.  26).  "The  phrase  'that  which  is 
dissolved  is  non-sentient  and  the  non-sentient  is  no  con- 
cern of  ours,'  it  does  not  remove  the  fear  of  death,  but 
adds,  as  it  were,  a  demonstration  of  it,  for  that  is  the  very 
thing  which  Nature  fears  — 

'  But  you  all  may  turn  into  earth  and  water '  — 

it  does  fear  the  dissolution  of  the  soul  into  that  which  has 
no  intelligence  and  which  has  no  perception  (a  dissolu- 
tion), which  Epicurus  construing  as  a  scattering  into 
Emptiness  and  Atoms  even  more  eradicates  the  hope  of 
incorruptibility,  .  .  ."  (t'6.,  c.  27)  (en  fj,a\\ov 


The  Stoics  present  to  us  the  most  virile  and  in  some 
respects  the  most  admirable — spiritually  admirable — reve- 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          275 

lation  of  the  Greek  mind :  and  still  they  exhibit  a  body 
of  thought  and  a  system  of  conduct  which,  as  a  boreas 
sweeping  down  among  the  zephyrs  of  Capri  and  Sorrento, 
seems  to  draw  down  rudely  from  its  pedestal  the  very 
incarnation  of  Hellenic  happiness  and  the  sunny  content- 
ment with  this  world  of  sense  and  seeming. 

But  let  us  look  for  some  cause  and  reason  for  this  valu- 
ation. Zeno  was  a  Greek  of  Kittion  in  Cyprus,  island 
where  Greek  and  Oriental  were  fused  in  many  ways.  We 
will  not  conjecture  vaguely  of  Phoenician  lines  or  lineaments 
in  the  physiognomy  of  the  founder  of  Stoicism:  nowhere 
in  Greek  civilization  was  Astarte-Aphrodite  so  slightly 
regarded  as  in  Zeno's  system.  Futility  to  pore  over  the 
meagre  data  as  to  his  physical  person,  thin,  of  dark  com- 
plexion, and  other  accidents.  He  came  to  Athens  as  a 
skipper  or  trader  and  finally  determined  to  abide  there. 
He  heard  the  wisdom  of  other  schools  for  many  years. 
The  emancipation  from  the  world's  coveted  boons  such 
as  the  Cynics  practised  with  uncomely  rudeness  —  the 
principle  of  it  all,  at  least,  gained  his  approbation. 
Megarian  acuteness  of  logical  analysis  had  much  to  do 
also  with  his  making. 

The  colonnade,  or  Stoa,  in  Athens  where  he  taught  has 
given  to  the  world  the  stern  word  we  all  know.  Right 
by  the  bustle  and  turmoil  of  the  market  was  this  painted 
porch  —  clearly  the  Stoics  were  not  a  coterie  of  soft  men 
and  advanced  women  like  those  of  the  park  of  Epicurus. 
The  very  background  of  the  colonnade  was  adorned  with 
paintings,  stirring,  warlike,  legendary,  or  patriotic :  an 
association  or  environment  not  antipathetic  to  the  founder 
of  the  school,  who  took  his  turns  there  with  his  followers 
—  Trojan  scenes,  Attic  legends,  but  Marathon  and  Plataea 
as  well  —  the  spirit  of  Theseus  and  of  Athena  and  Her- 
cules over  it  all. 

He  was  a  local  celebrity  at  Athens  in  his  lifetime,  and 
declined  an  invitation  from  Antigonos  Gonatas  of 
Macedon.  Zeno  survived  Epicurus  some  eight  to  ten 
years,  dying  in  264  or  263,  when  Rome  was  beginning  to 
grapple  with  Carthage.  One  or  perhaps  two  decrees  were 


276  TESTIMONIUM  AXBLE 

passed  by  the  citizens'  general  meeting,  or  ekklesia :  the 
Athenians  gave  him  the  honors  of  golden  wreath,  of  statue, 
of  burial  in  their  most  distinguished  Avenue  of  tombs, 
the  Kerameikos.  And  this  was  the  cause  assigned  (Diog. 
Laer.,  7, 10),  "  Since  Zeno,  son  of  Mnaseas  of  Kittion,  hav- 
ing lived  for  many  years  while  engaged  in  the  pursuit  of 
wisdom,  in  our  city,  has  throughout  been  a  good  man  in 
the  remaining  things  and  particularly  in  calling  those 
youths  who  came  to  be  introduced  to  him,  to  virtue  and 
self-control  and  gave  them  an  impulse,  having  set  forth 
his  own  personal  life  a  pattern  for  all,  a  life  which  was  in 
agreement  with  the  precepts  which  he  produced  in  his 
discourses.  ..." 

Quite  Attic,  too,  was  this  provision  that  one  column 
engraved  with  this  decree  was  to  be  placed  in  the  Academy, 
the  other  in  the  Lyceum  —  the  name  of  Zeno  to  be  thus 
enrolled  directly  with  the  names  of  Plato  and  Aristotle: 
the  quondam  head  of  a  naval  and  insular  empire  had  be- 
come a  peaceful  academic  town  and  a  Museum  of  the 
Hellenic  past. 

Zeno,  if  the  anecdotes  in  Diogenes  are  truthfully  or 
exactly  transmitted,  craved  not  a  large  following  of  dis- 
ciples, nor  treated  with  excess  of  comity  those  who  came 
to  him. 

To  a  youth  who  was  very  talkative,  he  said  (Diog.  Laer., 
7,  21):  "Thy  ears  have  fused  with  thy  tongue." 

To  a  comely  youth  he  said :  "  Nothing  is  more  wretched 
than  you  fair  ones.  ..."  And  here  he  forsook  the 
spirit  of  the  Hellenic  world,  ascending  to  a  higher  plane 
of  judgment.  Of  judgment,  but  his  personal  biography 
($.,  113)  is  not  without  stain,  for  there  was  no  law  of 
conduct  objective  or  categorical,  but  at  bottom  no  man 
had  any  judge  beyond  himself,  unless  the  polity  and  civil 
statute  determined.  Besides  this,  there  is  the  salient 
fact  that  both  the  followers  of  specific  sects  eagerly  be- 
spattered the  leaders  of  the  other  sects  with  foul  matter, 
and  that  the  broad  level  of  Hellenic  consciousness,  com- 
placent in  its  view  of  their  cancer,  claimed  that  none 
were  better  than  all,  the  sages  no  purer  than  the  rank 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          277 

and  file ;  or,  if  they  seemed  to  be,  that  was  but  a  hypo- 
critical pretence. 

As  a  fact,  during  his  own  career  in  Athens,  there  grew  up 
around  him  certainly  that  elusive  though  most  real  thing, 
a  reputation :  and  in  that  reputation  he  appeared  to  the  people 
of  Athens  as  superlatively  endowed  with  the  quality  of  self- 
control  (ey/eparem) :  his  name  here  became  veritably  prover- 
bial ;  his  school  was  held  as  of  those  who  led  the  simple  life  in 
food  and  drink  ($.,  27).  The  memorial  verses  of  those 
who  had  had  some  feeling  of  his  life  work  and  personality, 
laid  stress  on  his  sanity  of  mind  and  conduct  (o-ox^/aoo-iw/) : 
thus  he  attained  to  Olympus.  Or  they  pointed  to  his 
sturdy  self-sufficiency  (aura/a/eeta),  his  contempt  for  the 
empty  boasts  of  wealth,  the  essential  virility  of  his  philo- 
sophical thought,  Fate,  Freedom  that  knows  no  blanch- 
ing or  tremor.  Or  this,  that  Virtue  is  the  only  asset  of 
the  Soul,  or  of  commonwealths,  too.  Still,  when  Zeno, 
being  then  very  old,  broke  a  finger  in  an  accidental  col- 
lision, he  departed  from  life  voluntarily.  In  time  suicide 
became  an  important  article  in  the  sum  of  the  Stoic 
creed. 

The  pupil  who  succeeded  Zeno  as  head  and  lecturer  of 
the  stern  sect  was  Kleanthes.  The  data  of  his  life  are 
luminous  for  our  purpose,  he  was  worthy  of  headship 
because  he  was  a  rare  virtuoso  in  the  practice  of  the  pre- 
cepts, and  this  school  was  more  sincere  and  earnest  in  the 
practice  of  its  professions. 

To  hard  wax  Zeno  compared  the  ingenium  of  Kleanthes, 
to  a  substance  resisting  impression,  but  preserving  such 
with  much  endurance.  Kleanthes  came  to  Athens  from 
Assos  in  the  Troad  with  four  drachmas,  his  entire  worldly 
possessions.  Like  some  of  our  American  students  who 
"work  their  way  through  college,"  he  worked  at  night, 
carrying  water  (Diog.  Laer.,  7,  168)  in  the  gardens,  and, 
later  on,  the  glib  Attic  tongue  made  a  fair  pun  on  this. 
Antigonos  of  Macedon — often  a  sojourner  at  Athens  — 
asked  him  once  why  he  carried  water.  And  Kleanthes 
answered  :  "Why,  I  merely  carry  water.  But  why  don't 
I  ply  the  spade,  too  ?  Why  don't  I  irrigate  and  do  every- 


278  TESTIMONIUM  AXBLE 

thing  for  the  sake  of  philosophy  ?  "  Even  greater,  it  seems, 
was  his  moral  endurance  and  his  immobility  of  purpose 
in  the  face  of  belittling  and  abuse.  His  equipoise  under 
uncommon  provocation,  such  as  a  personal  gibe  from  the 
Attic  Stage,  arrested  the  attention  and  won  the  admiration 
of  the  town.  His  lecture  courses  he  took  by  using  shells 
and  the  broad  shoulderbones  of  cattle  to  write  on,  for  he 
lacked  the  small  coin  to  provide  himself  with  the  necessary 
bits  of  papyrus  material. 

Among  his  writings  were  three  books  on  Duty.  As  for 
this  word  or  the  concept  of  the  term,  it  is  claimed  for  Zeno 
(Diog.  Laer.,  7,  25)  that  he  coined  the  term  (TO  Kadijicov), 
a  matter  we  will  now  leave  to  the  registrars  of  things 
academic.  Among  his  other  titles  our  compiler  records 
these :  "  On  Impulse  "  (or  on  the  vigorous  assertion  of 
Will)  (TTC/H  0/3/4775) ;  three  books  on  "  Duty,"  on  "  Free- 
dom," on  the  "  Aim  of  Life  "  (jrepl  re'Xou?),  on  the  thesis 
that  the  "  Virtue  of  Man  and  Woman  is  the  Same "  — 
clearly  a  great  step  forward  beyond  Aristotle  —  on 
"  Pleasure,"  —  this  no  doubt  against  the  School  of  the 
Garden.  At  eighty  he  was  stricken  with  ulceration  — 
perhaps  with  gangrene  —  of  the  gums.  He  refused  food 
until  he  died. 

The  vernal  clover  leaf  of  this  great  school  had  for  third 
in  its  triad  the  name  of  Chrysippos  of  Soloi  in  Cilicia.  He 
laid  deeply  the  basis  of  erudition  and  of  academic  detail 
for  this  system.  He  devised  the  proofs  and  demonstra- 
tions (Diog.  Laer.,  7, 179).  His  literary  production  was  so 
enormous  that  any  finish,  or  even  any  concern  for  style,  was 
out  of  the  question. 

A  polyhistor,  in  a  way,  he  browsed  on  every  mead,  and 
particularly  was  an  adept  in  discovering  matter  in  general 
literature,  fortifying  Stoicism  from  the  Classics  of  the 
Hellenic  world.  He  died  in  207  B.C.,  at  Athens,  and  his 
ashes  were  entombed  in  the  Kerameikos.  What  he  and 
others  of  this  sect  did  for  logic  and  all  the  range  of  study 
concerned  with  human  understanding,  is  not  in  my  prov- 
ince, and  may  be  found  in  Prantl's  learned  volume. 

But  God  and  the  world,  man  and  conduct,  and  all  the 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          279 

Vistas  of  the  Infinite,  towards  which  the  human  soul 
always  seems  to  be  impelled  or  propelled  by  a  force  of 
kinship  and  eternity — these  themes  concern  us  in  the 
Philosophy  of  Freedom. 


Is  the  world  from  eternity  ?  Or  is  it  made,  has  it 
become  ?  Is  it  animate  or  non-animate  ?  Is  it  perishable 
or  imperishable  ?  Is  it  administered  by  providence  ? 

The  passive  element  in  nature  (Diog.  Laer.,  7,  134)  is 
matter:  uncreated  matter,  but  the  active  and  productive 
element  is  the  Reason  in  it,  God.  He  does  the  creative 
acts  throughout  the  whole  of  the  material  universe.  And 
this  principle,  divine  Reason,  is  from  Eternity.  There  is 
a  process  in  the  mechanism  of  coming  and  going  accom- 
plished through  Heat  —  it  makes  organic  things  and  dis- 
solves them  at  the  end.  And  this  primal  and  eternal 
Being  is  one,  though  men  name  it  with  various  appella- 
tions (i'5.,  135) :  God,  or  Intelligence,  or  Fate,  or  Zeus,  and 
many  other  names. 

The  universe  they  designate  also  in  three  ways:  "  God  " 
is  identical  with  this  specific  and  qualified  Cosmos  which 
we  perceive  and  in  which  we  too  have  our  being  —  we  see 
readily  the  large  pantheistic  drift  of  the  System.  This 
"  God  "  dissolves  the  material  universe  into  himself  in 
certain  periods  of  time,  and  again  begets  it  out  of  him- 
self (137). 

A  second  appellation  of  this  divine  universe  is  the  astral 
system,  and  a  third  the  combination  of  these  first  two. 

Now  this  Cosmos  is  administered  with  Intelligence  and 
Providence,  and  there  is  a  Soul  or  Animation  in  the  uni- 
verse as  it  is  in  human  bodies.  These  are  a  tiny  exemplar 
of  the  Cosmos  which  is  a  living  Being,  animate,  rational, 
and  intelligent.  Its  dominant  element  is  the  Ether.  But 
at  this  point,  perhaps,  we  must  make  a  place  for  the 
famous  Hymnos  of  Kleanthes,  preserved  by  Stobseus 
("  Eel.,"  1,  2,  12).  "  Most  renowned  of  immortals,  much- 
named  one,  omnipotent  ever,  Zeus,  leader  of  nature,  pilot 
of  Law  amid  all,  hail  !  for  Thee  all  mortals  are  permitted 


280  TESTIMONIUM  AXDLE 

to  accost.  For  of  thy  race  are  we,  alone  have  we  had 
allotted  to  us  some  of  Thee,  alone  of  mortal  beings  which 
on  earth  do  live  and  creeping  go.  Therefore  to  thee  my 
hymn  I'll  raise  and  ever  thy  puissance  sing.  Thee  obeys 
this  Cosmos  revolving  around  the  earth  wheresoever  thou 
leadest  and  willingly  is  under  thy  power.  Such  thunder- 
bolt Thou  boldest  in  thy  invincible  hands,  thunderbolt 
subservient,  two-edged,  fiery,  ever  living.  For  from  its 
blow  all  parts  of  nature  are  numb,  by  which  Thou  direct  est 
the  common  reason  which  permeates  all  and  is  mingled 
with  lights  great  and  small  .  .  .  being  so  great  Thou  art 
highest  King  through  all.  Nor  is  any  deed  achieved  on 
earth  without  Thee,  O  divine  power,  nor  in  the  ethereal 
divine  firmament,  nor  in  the  deep,  excepting  what  bad 
men  do  in  their  own  folly.  But  Thou  knowest  how  to 
make  the  crooked  straight  and  to  order  things  disordered, 
and  things  not  friendly  (to  us)  are  friendly  to  Thee.  For 
thus  hast  Thou  fitted  together  into  one  the  good  things 
with  the  evil,  so  that  there  is  made  one  rational  system 
(\oyov)  of  all  things  enduring  forever  which  fleeing  relin- 
quish all  those  mortals  who  are  evil,  the  ill-fated  ones, 
who,  ever  yearning  for  the  possession  of  boons,  neither 
behold  the  common  law  of  God  nor  hear  it,  which  obeying 
they  might  have  excellent  life  attended  by  understanding. 
But  they,  on  the  contrary,  bound  forward  without  the 
honorable,  one  for  this,  one  for  that  goal:  some  on  behalf 
of  reputation  having  a  zeal  of  evil  rivalry,  and  others 
turning  to  lucre  without  any  seemliness,  others  to  relaxa- 
tion and  the  pleasing  deeds  of  the  flesh  .  .  .  some  (then) 
are  borne  at  one  time  towards  this,  at  another  time 
towards  this,  striving  throughout  to  have  the  reverse  of 
these  things  come  to  pass. 

"But  Zeus,  All-giver,  gatherer  of  dark  clouds,  sovereign 
of  thunder,  save  thou  mankind  from  their  grievous  lack  of 
experience,  which,  Father,  do  Thou  dispel  from  their  soul, 
and  grant  that  they  may  happen  upon  wisdom,  relying 
upon  which  -thou  governest  all  things  with  justice,  to  the 
end  that  having  been  honored  (by  Thee)  we  may  make 
requital  to  Thee  with  honor,  singing  thy  works  perpetually, 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          281 

as  is  seemly  for  one  who  is  mortal,  since  there  is  no 
greater  privilege  either  for  gods  or  men,  than  ever  to  sing 
the  common  Law  of  righteousness." 

From  the  Stoic  god,  in  due  order,  we  pass  to  Stoic  man 
and  to  Stoic  humanity.  Free  is  man  as  over  against 
any  other  man,  but  at  the  same  time  his  essence  and  his 
strength  and  his  destiny  are  that  he  shall  live  "  in  accord- 
ance with  nature."  Now  in  my  academic  youth  and 
vernal  time,  reading  much  in  Cicero's  treatises  on  Greek 
philosophy,  I  incessantly  came  upon  this  axiom  of  "  con- 
sentire  naturae  "  "  secundum  naturam  vivere  "/  and  that  we 
"  shall  so  live  as  to  attain  all  things  which  are  in  ac- 
cordance with  nature."  But  I  knew  not  what  nature  they 
meant,  for  that  nature  of  which  I  had  the  irrefragable  and 
positive  test  of  actual  experience  was  a  different  power  and 
force  from  this  Stoic  Nature ;  it  was  irascible,  vain,  selfish, 
impelled  towards  concupiscence;  it  was  envious,  proud, 
impatient,  and  one  which  I  often  sighed  about  in  the 
privacy  of  sincere  self-communion.  What  nature,  then, 
was  that  of  Zeno  ?  Clearly  something  akin  to  Perfection,  to 
an  Absolute  Law,  something  endowed  with  qualities  before 
which  the  purer  and  nobler  aspirations  of  this  soul  of  ours 
must  prostrate  themselves,  and  in  conformity  with  which 
it  must  seek  its  highest  happiness;  something,  then,  it 
must  be,  quite  different  from  what  we  in  common  parlance 
call  "  Human  Nature." 

Man  is  the  apex  of  the  hierarchy  of  those  beings  which 
are  constituents,  and  also  works,  of  this  "Nature,"  this 
Universe,  this  "  God."  Now  man  is  made  to  contemplate 
and  to  imitate  the  Universe,  man,  not  at  all  perfectly 
wrought,  but  a  certain  tiny  portion  of  the  Perfect.  "  You 
cannot,"  said  Chrysippos  (Plut.,  "  Moralia,"  Vol.  VI,  p. 
220,  ed.  Bernardakis)  "  find  any  other  (principle  or)  be- 
ginning of  Righteousness  than  that  from  Zeus  and  from 
Common  Nature  ;  for  from  this  source  all  such  must  have 
its  beginning,  if  we  are  to  take  any  ground  on  Boons 
and  Evils."  And  on  the  same  page  says  the  same 
high  authority  of  the  Sect:  "For  one  cannot  otherwise 
nor  with  more  intrinsic  propriety  reach  the  rational 


282  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

explanation  (Xo'yo?)  of  the  Boons  and  Evils,  nor  the 
Virtues,  nor  Happiness,  but  from  the  Common  Nature 
and  from  the  administration  of  the  Cosmos."  And 
therein  men  must  be  content ;  —  to  be  good,  to  eschew 
evil,  is  the  very  purpose  of  this  divine  and  Universal 
Nature,  it  is  here  that  man  may,  come  what  may,  believe 
himself  in  harmony  with  the  Eternal  and  Imperishable. 
Says  Chrysippos :  "  For  otherwise  no  particular  thing 
can  come  to  pass,  not  even  the  least  one,  than  in  accord- 
ance with  the  Common  Nature  and  the  rational  plan 
(Xo'709)  of  the  same"  ($.,  p.  259). 

As  to  life  and  happening  nothing  is  isolated;  every- 
thing is  determined  by  antecedent  necessity  :  here  is 
revealed  the  living  and  basic  Reason  which  dominates  the 
Universe  and  should  dominate  us  and  in  us,  if  only  we 
are  wise  enough  to  be  in  absolute  conformity,  harmony,  and 
loyal  subordination — to  the  Universe,  Nature,  God.  Thus 
normal  actuality  proceeds  with  Reason  and  thus  justifies 
itself  to  our  soul  as  divine,  as  Fate,  as  Providence  ;  in 
common  parlance  the  Hellenes  call  it  the  Will  of  Zeus. 
In  the  rebirth  of  living  beings  and  in  the  continuation  of 
organic  life  this  Providence  or  Fate  reveals  itself  as  the 
seed-providing  Reason  (Xo'yo<?  o-Tre/o/ian/eo?). 

The  conception  of  Design  is  deeply  interwoven  in  all 
the  texture  of  the  Stoic  system  of  thought,  and  with  it 
there  goes  a  certain  postulate  of  gods. 

And  now  we  come  from  their  academic  and  pantheistic 
god  to  the  popular  and  traditional  gods  of  Hellenic 
worship. 

It  was  the  beauty  and  marvellous  order,  the  Stoics  held, 
that  roused  and  kindled  in  the  souls  of  men  the  assump- 
tion of  God  (Plut.,  "Placita  Philos.,"  1,  6,  8  *^.)  : 
"  For  always  sun  and  moon  and  the  remaining  constella- 
tions moving  in  their  orbits  under  the  earth  "  (jrjv  inrdyeiov 
<f>opdv)  (and  back  again)  rise  alike  as  to  tints,  and  even  as  to 
measures,  both  as  to  identity  of  spaces  and  times.  There- 
fore those  who  established  the  tradition  of  the  worship 
concerned  with  the  gods  (rbv  Trepl  rwv  Oewv  TrapaBovre? 
a-efiao-fjLov)  did  bring  it  forward  for  us  through  three 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          283 

forms:  first,  through  the  form  of  Nature ;  second,  through 
the  form  of  legends  ;  and  third,  from  that  form  which  has 
derived  its  evidence  from  (communal  usages)  laws.  And 
the  Nature-form  (of  worship)  is  taught  by  the  philosopher, 
and  the  legendary  (or  mythical)  by  the  poets,  and  the 
statutory  is  enacted  (awCa-varaC)  by  each  commonwealth." 
And  herein  lies  a  world  of  significance  for  this  book  and 
the  author's  and  his  readers'  quest.  The  school  assumed 
a  conservative,  nay  a  conserving,  attitude  towards  the 
created  gods  of  popular  or  national  worship ;  some  element 
of  moral  good  there  might  be  there,  and  some  check  or  bar 
on  dissolute  living  or  upon  the  passions  :  but  in  concrete 
detail  the  Stoic  scholars  resorted  to  the  device  of  allegory 
and  speculative  etymology.  But  the  narrower  measure  of 
these  essays  and  sketches  compels  us  to  be  content  with  one 
weighty  citation.  (Homer  and  Hesiod  they  knew  had 
come  to  stay  and  were  more  abiding  elements  in  national 
culture  than  any  speculation  or  dogma  of  the  schools.) 
"Therefore  the  firmament  seemed  to  them  (i.e.  to  those 
who  established  the  tradition  of  popular  religious  usages) 
to  exist  as  Father,  and  earth,  Mother.  Of  these,  the 
former,  because  it  poured  out  the  waters  and  so  had  the 
disposition  of  seeds,  while  the  latter  was  Mother  on  ac- 
count of  her  receiving  these  seeds  and  bringing  (them)  to 
birth  ;  and  beholding  the  celestial  bodies  ever  running 
and  causes  enabling  us  to  view,  they  named  Sun  and 
Moon  gods.  A  second  and  third  classification  of  gods 
they  instituted,  viz.,  the  noxious  and  the  beneficent  ele- 
ment :  and  as  the  beneficial  ones,  Zeus,  Hera,  Hermes, 
Demeter,  and  the  injurious  ones,  the  Poinai,  the  Erinyans, 
Ares ;  appeasing  these  latter  as  being  difficult  to  bear  and 
fraught  with  violence.  A  fourth  and  fifth  class  they 
have  added  through  practical  concerns  and  emotions  ;  of 
emotions,  Aphrodite,  Pothos  (desire);  of  practical  con- 
cerns, Elpis  (hope),  Dik§  (Justice),  Eunomia  (good  gov- 
ernment). A  sixth  place  is  assumed  by  those  moulded 
by  the  poets.  .  .  .  And  seventh  and  after  all  is  that  ele- 
ment which  has  been  eminently  honored  on  account  of  its 
benefactions  towards  common  life,  an  element  of  human 


284  TESTIMONIUM  ANIMJ3 

birth,  like  Hercules,  like  the  Dioscuri  (Kastor  and  Pollux) 
like  Dionysos  (Bacchus).  And  they  said  that  they  were 
of  the  form  of  men  (avdpayjroei,§el<f)  because,  of  all  being, 
divinity  is  the  most  sovereign,  and  of  living  beings  (or- 
ganic life,  we  would  now  say)  man  is  the  comeliest,  being 
adorned  with  virtue  in  a  distinguished  manner  in  con- 
nection with  the  organization  (0-voTa<n9)  of  Understand- 
ing" (Plut.,  "Placit.  Philos.,"  1,  6,  11-15).  And  thus, 
too,  the  Stoic  lecturers  had  much  to  say  of  Hercules  :  he 
defeated  boar,  lion,  steer,  i.e.  the  appetites  and  passions 
of  human  kind  :  he  destroyed  the  many-headed  hydra, 
that  is  to  say,  the  endless  forms  of  illicit  desire. 

The  school  earnestly  strove  to  preserve  these  legends, 
but  sought  to  ennoble  them  by  steeping  them  in  the 
brine  of  Stoic  doctrine. 

But,  at  last,  man  himself,  man  alone,  so  determined  and 
predetermined  by  the  links  in  the  adamantine  chain  of 
eternal  necessity,  what  should  he  do  ?  What  is  his  aim  ? 
What  is  he  here  for  ? 

Self-love  and  self-preservation  are  the  first  ordinance  of 
Nature,  a  law  of  the  Universe :  certain  things  are  sought, 
while  others  are  avoided.  Later  on  in  each  life  comes 
the  mature  use  of  reason,  the  finer  grasp  of  what  is  fair 
and  honorable.  And  here  they  were  not  far  away  from 
the  somewhat  overestimated  categorical  Imperative  of 
Professor  Immanuel  Kant  —  a  kind  of  semper  et  ubique 
too :  an  obligation  far  transcending,  in  fact,  utterly  un- 
concerned with,  nay  defiant  of,  all  motive  bound  up  with 
comfort  and  convenience.  What  is  the  Good  ?  What  is 
good  ?  What  is  the  Aim  ?  A  happy  Life.  To  be  in  har- 
mony with  the  Universe,  of  which  we  men  are  parts. 
We  must  therefore  eschew  all  things  which  the  upright 
Reason  forbids,  a  law,  mind  you,  which  is  binding  on  that 
supreme  Divine  Force  no  less  than  on  you  and  me,  on 
Achilles  no  less  than  on  Thersites,  on  autocrat  no  less 
than  on  slave.  You  must  do  that  which  your  reason  will 
tell  you  is  the  universal  law.  Your  reason  knows,  and 
particularly  is  it  fitted  to  guide  you  when  it  has  acquired 
the  true  canon  of  valuation.  Let  this  be  briefly  outlined. 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          285 

Virtue  is  a  practical  disposition  or  faculty  (eft?)  con- 
sistent with  itself  and  one  which  must  be  chosen  "  for  its 
own  sake  (Diog.  Laer.,  7,  89),  not  on  account  of  any  fear 
or  hope  or  anything  without  "  —  the  externals,  unrelated 
to  the  human  soul.  In  such  virtue  lies  the  happiness  of 
life. 

Moral  evil  there  must  be,  otherwise  how  could  we 
recognize  the  moral  good?  ($.,  91).  The  primary  vir- 
tues are  :  Understanding,  Fortitude,  Justice,  Self-control. 

There  is  a  reaction  of  the  good  on  him  who  does  it  — 
virtue  ennobles  those  who  live  it.  An  implied  and 
involved  result  of  virtue  is  joy,  a  cheery  soul,  and  the 
like. 

Of  boons  (ayaOa)  some  concern  the  soul  (ib.,  95), 
others  are  external  or  foreign  to  it,  and  still  others  are 
neutral. 

There  are  boons  which  create  or  make  for  those  other 
ones  which  are  ends  in  themselves  (reXt/ca)  :  still  others 
are  ends  in  themselves,  as,  e.g.,  courage,  wisdom,  freedom, 
joy,  cheerfulness,  freedom  from  distress.  Virtues  alone 
are  both  means  and  ends  in  the  determination  of  happi- 
ness. Everything  worthy  of  the  predicate  of  a  good  is 
also  advantageous,  profitable,  useful,  necessary,  worthy  of 
choice,  righteous. 

The  only  evils,  on  the  other  hand,  are  moral  evils,  be- 
cause these  only  concern  the  soul  and  the  essential  being 
of  man,  as  folly,  unrighteousness.  Thus  the  neutral  are 
those  objects  which  neither  benefit  nor  injure,  i.e.  the 
soul :  such  are,  life,  health,  pleasure,  beauty,  strength, 
wealth,  fame,  noble  birth,  and  the  like.  And  neutral 
also  are  the  opposite,  as  death,  disease,  pain,  ugliness, 
feebleness,  poverty,  obscurity,  low  birth  —  the  far-famed 
adiaphora  of  the  school. 

For  there  was  in  this  school  a  joy  and  a  defiance,  which 
made  them  love  consistency  and  a  certain  rigor  of  logical 
sequence,  and  a  spirit  which  glorified  in  paradox. 

As  a  man  of  sound  bodily  health  is  well  in  all  his  parts, 
so  the  truly  virtuous  one  whose  soul  is  truly  whole.  The 
concrete  virtues  are  indissolubly  connected  and  bound  up 


286  TESTIMONIUM  ANIM^E 

with  one  another  —  there  is  here  nothing  partial  or  ec- 
lectic. Nor  is  there  anything  (here  they  faced  sharply 
against  the  followers  of  Aristotle)  midway  between  virtue 
and  moral  evil.  There  are  no  degrees :  you  cannot  logi- 
cally speak  of  something  more  righteous  or  unrighteous, 
as  a  piece  of  wood  is  either  straight  or  crooked. 

Let  no  one  rob  the  school  of  their  coinage  of  the  term 
which  we  English  as  duty  (Kadfjicov). 

It  is  that  "  which,  when  done,  has  a  certain  rational 
defence"  (16.,  107).  Such  acts  are  " postulates  of  Rea- 
son" (ova  \dyos  aipel  Troieti/),  e.g.  to  honor  one's  parents, 
brothers,  commonwealth,  etc. 

After  all,  Stoic  goodness  is  for  an  intellectual  aristoc- 
racy :  the  highest  category  of  right  action  (/caro/j^w/ta) 
none  but  the  Sage  can  accomplish  or  do,  axiomatic  or 
absolute  goodness. 

Emotions  are  a  form  of  evil  in  the  main :  the  Stoic, 
utterly  anti-Hellenic  here,  pleads  the  Reason  of  Nature  in 
his  rigorous  opposition  to  that  soul-weakness  and  that 
soul-perversion  which  we  call  passion,  and  which  sways 
the  multitude  of  the  unwise. 

Like  his  antagonist  of  the  Epicurean  School,  the  Stoic 
aimed  at  a  certain  happiness,  but  his  demand  that  the 
soul-ocean  be  unruffled  by  fear,  by  lust,  by  desire,  nay 
even  by  ambition,  the  Stoic's  postulate,  I  say,  of  a  certain 
peace  of  soul,  is  infinitely  more  virile  than  the  other,  and 
he  alone  has  taken  steps  leading  towards  that  difficult 
goal :  the  conquest  of  the  world. 

Of  humility  it  is  true  we  see  nothing  either  here  or 
elsewhere :  the  spiritual  pride  of  the  genuine  Stoic  is 
gigantic  —  a  self-sufficiency  which  moves  him  far  away 
from  the  essence  of  Christianity  —  it  is  in  the  bliss  and 
immortality  of  God  alone  that  he,  God,  is  above  the  Stoic 
Sage  :  this  is  their  boast. 

But  in  our  Roman  section  we  will  find  the  practical 
strength,  the  incarnation,  we  may  say,  of  this  system, 
which  consummates  and,  in  a  manner,  terminates  the  nobler 
movement  of  Greek  thought,  while  it  denies  the  ideals  of 
the  Hellenic  world  at  almost  every  point. 


HELLENIC  DECLINE.    ATTIC  MORALITY          287 

NOTE.  —  Praxiteles,  the  sculptor  and  lover  of  the  courtesan  Phryne, 
was  of  this  period  of  decadent  Greek  life,  flourishing  about  352-336, 
in  the  age  of  Philip  and  Demosthenes.  His  technical  skill  indeed 
was  marvellous :  the  limbs  of  his  figures  so  soft  that  you  seemed  to 
see  the  pulse  of  life  and  the  quivering  muscle.  The  disciples  of 
mandatory  ecstasy  repeat  with  dogmatic  positiveness  the  familiar 
phrase  of  Pliny  ("N".  H.,"  34,  10)  :  "  nil  velare  Grsecumest."  As  though 
it  were  a  canon  of  Art:  when  even  the  gesture  of  Praxiteles'  much- 
vaunted  Knidian  Aphrodite  proves  a  last  vain  symbolism  of  the  utter- 
ance of  Herodotus  (1,  8)  :  "  for  as  she  puts  off  her  tunic  at  the  same 
time  also  does  a  woman  doff  her  sense  of  shame." 

As  for  Aphrodite  it  was  not  until  down  to  the  time  of  Praxiteles 
that  all  drapery  was  dropped  from  her  figure :  and  it  was  felt  an  act 
of  supreme  boldness.  The  simple  question  will  instinctively  rise  to 
our  lips  :  Why  then  was  not  Hera  presented  as  undraped?  Why  not 
Artemis?  Athena?  Why  not  the  Nine  Muses?  The  noted  archaeologist 
Heinrich  Brunn  says  of  the  Knidian  Aphrodite  :  "  Here  it  is  ...  the 
merely  sensuous  appearance,  which  by  itself  and  alone  is  to  rouse 
pleasurable  acceptance.  The  older  idea  of  an  Aphrodite  Urania  has 
been  dropped ;  with  the  drapery  also  there  fell  the  higher  intellectual 
conception"  (whatever  that  may  have  been)  "of  the  goddess."  We 
recall  the  unveiled  contempt  in  Homer  for  this  Oriental  importation. 
The  general  movement  was  from  chaster  conception  towards  freer : 
so  of  the  painter  Polygnotos  we  are  told  by  Pliny  ("N.  H.,"  58)  :  "  qui 
primus  mulieres  tralucida  veste  pinxit "  first  painted  women  with 
transparent  garment. 

Of  Pheidias  we  are  wont  to  think  as  a  sovereign  artist  who  knew 
how  to  fuse  a  certain -majesty  with  canonic  truth  of  sculptural  lines. 
The  ecstatic,  however,  should  not  forget  that  Pheidias  placed  the 
figure  of  a  lad  Pantarkes  near  his  much-vaunted  production  of  the 
Homeric  Zeus  —  the  youth  represented  as  tying  his  head  with  a  fillet 
(Paus.,  5,  11),  and  they  say  "that  he  was  a  boy-favorite  of  Pheid- 
ias." This  was  the  "  religion "  of  beauty.  Elsewhere  Pausanias 
(10,  3,  6)  calls  him  "  the  beloved  "  (TO.  TraiStKct)  of  Pheidias. 

There  is  a  curious  testimony  of  the  soul  in  the  vague  and  evasive 
phrase  coined  by  the  Greeks:  the  neuter-plural  (TO.  TrcuSiKct)  :  "the 
boy-concerns  "  of  such  or  such  a  one.  On  the  Greek  Cancer  or  the 
Venus  Canina,  Professor  M.  H.  E.  Meier  has  written  a  monograph  of 
some  forty  pages  quarto,  in  Ersch  and  Gruber,  and  we  must  acquit  him 
of  any  palliation  of  this  monstrous  evil. 

I  have  already  deplored  the  fact  that  even  the  virile  .35schylus 
conceived  of  the  friendship  of  Achilles  and  Patroklos  in  this  unspeak- 
able mode  :  also  we  must  here  add  that  the  Niobe  of  Sophocles  had 
this  matter  for  its  central  theme.  No,  Meier  fully  and  fairly  deals 
with  "  Knabenschandung,"  as  such.  Still  he,  little  acquainted  with 
the  measure  of  complete  harmony  subsisting  in  the  Italy  of  the 
Humanists  between  wonderful  culture  and  utter  moral  corruption,  I 
say  the  Scholar  of  Halle  says  near  the  end  of  his  treatise :  "  Our 


288  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

delineation  has  indeed  shown  that  the  vice  of  sexual  violation  of  boys 
was  practised  among  the  Greeks  to  so  deplorable  an  extent,  as  must 
be  quite  incomprehensible  on  the  part  of  a  nation  so  highly  cultured." 
If  only  culture — sesthetical  culture  —  made  in  the  slightest  degree 
for  righteousness !  Cf .  also  Deut.  23,  17  :  "  There  shall  be  no  whore 
of  the  daughters  of  Israel,  nor  a  Sodomite  of  the  sons  of  Israel." 


The  citations  from  Philemon  and  Menander  are  made  from  Meineke's 
edition.  As  for  Epicurus  and  his  school,  the  entire  tenth  book  of 
Diogenes  Laertius  is  devoted  to  them.  The  famous  Polyhistor  of 
Bonn,  H.  Usener,  has  published  anew  the  most  important  portions 
of  these  texts,  viz.,  the  direct  utterances  of  Epicurus  himself.  As  for 
the  so-called  letter  to  Pythokles,  I  see  no  cogent  reason  for  doubting 
its  authenticity.  Further,  Usener  publishes  all  attainable  fragments 
(so-called)  ascribed  to  Epicurus.  The  index  is  particularly  valuable : 
"  Epicurea"  edidit  Hermannus  Usener,  Lipsiae,  in  aedibusB.  G.Teub- 
ner,  1887. 

On  all  matters  of  theological  speculation  among  the  Greeks,  cor- 
sult  the  learned  volume  of  Krische :  "  Die  theologischen  Lehren  der 
Griechischen  Denker"  etc.  v.  Dr.  August  Bernhard  Krische,  Gottingen, 
1840. 

On  Stoics  v.  esp.  Book  VII  of  Diogenes  Laertius,  and  several  essays 
by  Plutarch,  essays  rich  particularly  in  direct  citations  from  Chry- 
sippos.  (De  Stoicorum  Repugnantiis  :  De  Communibus  Notitiis.')  Rit- 
ter  et  Preller,  "Hisloria  Philosophies  Grcecce  et  Romance  ex  Fontium 
Locis  contexta,"  Gotha,  Perthes,  5th  ed.,  1875.  Zeller's  footnotes  are 
even  more  valuable.  For  the  allegories  of  Greek  Religion,  see  "  Cor- 
nuti  Theologice  Grcecce  Compendium,"  ed.  C.  Lang,  Teubner,  1881. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

ACTUAL  WOKSHIP   IN    GREEK   COMMUNITIES.    THE  VOICE 

OF  TOMBS 

THE  wonderful  perfection  of  Hellenic  sculpture  and  of 
their  architecture  is  so  impressive  that  their  religious 
worship,  too,  has  been  idealized  by  many  who  stand  re- 
mote from  the  real  labor  of  the  classicist.  We  must  hold 
fast  to  the  following :  in  the  main  the  concern  of  their 
worship  was  not  for  spiritual  things.  As  the  community 
lived  through  sun  and  moon  and  weather  and  seasons,  it 
besought  certain  Forces  of  Nature  for  their  blessing  and 
protection.  Such  acts  of  worship  were  largely  communal, 
nay  political,  acts.  They  commemorated  the  crises  and 
fortunes  of  the  past,  they  glorified  often  a  legendary  de- 
pendence of  the  particular  community  on  some  act  of 
founding  and  beginning  —  ancestral  joy  and  pride  domi- 
nated such  anniversaries.  These  the  Greeks  called  eopr^ 
(Jieortd1*),  and  in  the  celebration  thereof  many  a  little 
valley  of  Arcadia,  or  narrow  plain,  or  strip  of  land  along 
some  river,  felt  almost  all  the  sentiment  both  of  nature 
and  state-feeling  which  gave  dignity  and  purpose  to  their 
whole  range  of  living  within  those  orbits  of  the  sun  which 
men  call  years.  In  the  time  of  Seneca  and  St.  Paul 
there  began  to  move  and  stir  a  new  drift,  not  ignoble  in 
aim  and  design.  This  was  a  movement  to  lay  hold  of 
noble  things  in  Greek  thought,  —  particularly  as  worked 
out  by  Plato  and  in  the  Soul-doctrines  of  Pythagoras, 
— and,  at  the  same  time,  to  maintain  the  popular 
worship. 

Plutarch  stands  as  the  embodiment  of  this  Renaissance. 

Let  us  hear  some  of  his  utterances  on  Greek  Religion. 

In  his  essay  entitled  "  That  one  cannot  even  live  pleasantly 

when  following  Epicurus," — cap.  20, — he  says:  "And  I 

u  289 


290  TESTIMONIUM  ANIftLE 

do  say  .  .  .  ,  that  Atheism  is  no  smaller  evil  than  rude- 
ness and  vain  conceit,  into  which  we  are  led  by  those 
who  remove  Grace  as  well  as  Anger  from  God.  For  bet- 
ter were  it  that  there  should  subsist  and  be  fused  with 
the  idea  of  gods  a  common  emotion  of  reverence  and  fear, 
rather  than  fleeing  from  this  we  should  leave  for  ourselves 
neither  hope  nor  gratitude  towards  them  nor  any  trust  in 
the  blessings  we  actually  possess  nor  any  refuge  to  the 
Deity  for  those  who  are  in  distress." 

Plutarch's  own  hopes  were  for  a  life  after  the  dissolu- 
tion of  this  body,  a  life  where  the  soul  is  by  itself,  escaped 
from  the  trammels  of  the  flesh.  Death  indeed  the  begin- 
ning of  the  truer  and  the  nobler  life  —  whereas  now  (ib., 
c.  28)  we  live,  as  it  were,  in  dreams.  "If  then  sweet  from 
every  point  of  view  is  the  recollection  of  a  friend  deceased," 
as  Epicurus  said,  "  then  even  now  can  we  perceive  of  what 
kind  of  a  joy  they  deprive  themselves,  believing  that  they 
receive  and  pursue  spectres  and  images  of  deceased  com- 
rades, who  possess  neither  intelligence  nor  perception,  but 
there  will  be  associated  with  themselves  again  truly  both 
their  dear  father  and  their  dear  mother,  and  perhaps  they 
will  see  a  good  wife,  not  expecting  it,  nor  having  hope  of 
that  association  and  cheer,  which  those  have  who  hold  the 
same  views  about  the  soul  as  Pythagoras  and  Plato  and 
Homer." 

The  same  thinker,  Plutarch,  outlines  thus  the  drift  and 
attitude  of  actual,  popular,  religious  feeling  (ib.,  c.  21) : 
"  But  the  disposition  of  the  many  and  unlettered  but  not 
altogether  bad  people  toward  God  has  indeed  a  certain 
shudder  and  awe  blended  with  the  element  of  reverence 
and  honoring :  wherefore  also  it  is  called  superstition 
(SeiffiSaifjiovia) ;  but  in  numberless  instances  it  possesses 
in  a  larger  and  greater  proportion  the  element  of  exceed- 
ing joyousness  and  good  hope,  and  something  that  prays 
for,  and  accepts  as  being  from  the  gods,  all  fruition  of 
prosperity.  And  this  is  clear  by  the  greatest  proofs.  For 
no  form  of  sojourn  causes  more  enjoyment  than  that  in 
sanctuaries,  nor  any  occasions  more  than  those  connected 
with  the  recurrent  festivals,  nor  other  deeds  or  spectacles 


ACTUAL  WORSHIP  IN  GREEK  COMMUNITIES     291 

give  greater  satisfaction  than  those  which  we  ourselves 
behold  or  enact  in  connection  with  the  gods  going  through 
ritual  acts  of  pantomime  (opyidfrvrcs^)  or  dancing  or  at- 
tending sacrifices  or  initiations."  And  now  follows  the 
interpretation  of  the  Platonist :  "  for  not  as  though  associ- 
ating with  some  tyrants  or  awful  chastisers  at  that  season 
is  the  soul  exceedingly  grieved,  and  humble  and  cheerless 
as  was  to  be  expected :  but  where  most  it  supposes  and 
intelligently  holds  that  God  is  present,  there  above  all 
other  occasions  thrusting  away  from  itself  griefs  and  fears 
and  worry,  (the  soul)  yields  itself  to  pleasurable  emotions 
which  are  carried  as  far  as  intoxication  and  laughter  and 
sport.  ..." 

"  Rich  men  and  kings  always  have  at  their  service  cer- 
tain feastings  and  banquets;  but  those  connected  with 
acts  of  worship  and  sacrificings,  and  whenever  they  seem 
to  come  into  the  closest  contact  through  their  conscious- 
ness (eirivoia)  with  the  deity  (rov  Oeiov)  a  state  attended 
with  the  sentiment  of  honor  and  reverence,  —  then  they 
have  a  pleasure  and  a  grace  (xcfyw)  which  differs  much. 
And  in  this  shares  no  man  who  has  abandoned  the  convic- 
tion of  Providence.  For  not  the  abundance  of  wine  nor 
the  roasting  of  meats  is  that  which  causes  enjoyment  at 
the  religious  anniversaries  (eoprafr),  but  also  good  hope 
and  assumption  that  the  god  is  present  with  good- will, 
and  receives  what  transpires  (ra  yiyvopeva)  graciously." 
Thus  the  nobler  soul  of  Plutarch  of  Chseronea  would 
maintain  the  rites  and  ritual  of  popular  religion. 

Now  it  happened,  that  some  fifty  and  sixty  years  later 
another  man  studied  Greek  religion  as  it  was  maintained 
in  the  communities,  big  and  little,  of  old  Hellas.  And  in 
that  vigorous  current  trend  of  the  second  century  this 
traveller  also  was  wholly  absorbed.  I  mean  the  concerted 
effort  to  search  out  and  to  repristinate  what  was  fair,  or 
old,  or  classic,  in  letters,  usages,  art,  religious  customs,  — 
let  us  simply  call  it  the  Hadrianic  renaissance.  The  trav- 
eller and  antiquarian  I  have  in  mind  was  Pausanias.  In 
an  age  when  all  worked  after  some  classic  pattern,  he  chose, 
not  unfittingly,  for  himself,  Herodotus  of  Halicarnassus. 


292  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

The  latter's  manner,  and  much  more,  he  gained,  as  he 
wished  to  gain,  and  certainly  was  praised  for  gaining. 
And  we  may  safely  say  that  Pausanias  in  a  way  and  in  a 
measure  looked  out  upon  human  and  divine  things  in  the 
spirit  of  Herodotus.  Artificial?  Perhaps  so,  but  infi- 
nitely less  so  than  the  renaissance  of  Petrarch,  of  Bruni 
and  Boccaccio  and  Politian  and  Poggio  and  Beccadelli, 
which  your  Goethe  and  Wolff  bid  us  all  venerate,  imitate, 
and  consider  a  consummation. 

But  let  us  permit  Pausanias  to  speak  for  himself.  The 
chief  community  of  Arcadia,  once  the  proud  metropolis  of 
the  same,  was  then  mainly  in  ruins  (8,  33,  1).  But,  says 
he,  "  I  marvelled  not,  knowing  that  the  daimonion  always 
wills  to  enact  certain  things  subversive  in  their  nature, 
and  that  Fortune  changes  alike  all  that  is  strong  and  all 
that  is  weak.  ..."  And  in  the  celebrities  that  have  seen 
desolation  in  his  time  he  even  includes  Delos :  "  Delos  in- 
deed, if  you  subtract  those  who  arrive  from  time  to  time 
from  the  Athenians  to  be  guards  of  the  sanctuary,  as  far 
as  the  Delians  are  concerned,  is  desolate  of  human  beings. 
.  .  ."It  was  the  time  when  Alexandria  and  Antioch  ut- 
terly excelled.  Wretched  was  the  end  of  Kassander,  who 
consistently  had  rooted  out  the  dynasty  of  Philip  and 
Alexander  (9,  7,  2) :  "  for  he  was  filled  with  dropsy,  and 
from  it  maggots  were  bred  in  him  while  he  was  living.  ..." 

Philopoimen,  the  great  statesman  of  the  Achaian  league, 
paid  the  penalty  for  his  pride  (8,  51,  5).  Sulla  once 
carried  off  the  sacred-figure  (agalma)  of  Athena  in  the 
little  hamlet  of  Alalkomenai  in  Boeotia:  "Him  who  had 
wrought  such  deeds  of  insanity  on  Hellenic  communities 
and  gods  of  the  Hellenes,  him  seized  a  distemper  the  most 
joyless  of  all:  for  lice  broke  out  all  over  his  body,  and  his 
former  seeming  felicity  changed  into  such  an  end  for  him; 
but  the  sanctuary  at  Alalkomenai  was  neglected  thencefor- 
ward inasmuch  as  it  had  been  deprived  of  the  goddess  " 
(9,  33,  6).  Men  must  not  excessively  punish  their  fellows: 
"envy-producing  somehow  always  on  the  part  of  the  gods 
are  the  exceeding  measures  of  punishment "  (9,  17,  6). 
Philip,  son  of  Amyntas,  restored  Minyan  Orchomenos: 


ACTUAL  WORSHIP  IN  GREEK  COMMUNITIES     293 

but  "  the  influence  of  the  daimonion  was  bound  for  them 
ever  to  depress  the  scales  towards  greater  weakness " 
(9,  37,  8).  On  the  mass-tomb  of  the  Thebans  who  fell 
at  Chaironeia  there  is  no  inscription:  because,  "  as  it  seems 
to  me,  because  the  results  from  the  daimon  that  followed 
were  not  in  harmony  with  their  brave  onslaught "  (9, 40, 10) . 

The  Phocians  listened  and  accepted  the  counsel  to  loot 
the  sacred  treasures  of  Delphi,  "  whether  God  injured  their 
understanding  or  whether  it  was  in  their  own  native  disposi- 
tion to  set  profit  before  piety"  (10, 2,  3).  —  This  is  the  spirit 
of  the  traveller,  and  clearly  not  his  own  alone.  Why,  then, 
do  men  turn  to  certain  gods  ?  Primarily,  because  certain 
communities  and  certain  regions  claim  a  specific  tutelary 
relation  and  nestle,  so  to  speak,  under  the  favor  of  certain 
divinities. 

Springtime  and  its  blossoms:  here  came  the  Anthesteria  : 
the  blessings  of  the  grape  and  all  its  works  had  their  re- 
current celebration  in  spring,  also :  Theseus,  the  founder 
of  Attic  Union,  Marathon,  the  day  of  Attic  glory,  had 
their  stated  anniversaries :  the  restoration  of  popular 
government  through  Thrasybulos  was  commemorated 
every  year.  Of  the  esoteric  worship  of  Demeter  and 
Kore,  I  have  written  before.  In  the  main,  however,  this 
life  of  seasons  and  weathers,  of  fruits  and  flowers,  de- 
termined the  various  forms  of  public  worship. 

Zeus,  in  all,  at  Athens  ranked  lower  than  his  daughter 
Athena.  When  foul  weather  brought  in  the  beginning  of 
winter,  expiatory  sacrifices  were  offered  to  the  god  of  the 
canopy  over  fields  and  farms.  "  For,"  says  Schoemann, 
"  if  the  heavens  were  unkind,  the  god  of  the  heavens  cer- 
tainly was  so,  and  because  his  unkindness  might  have  been 
excited  through  the  fault  and  sins  of  men,  one  must  strive 
to  appease  him  through  purification  and  atonement. 
"As  the  farmer's  specific  patron,  Zeus  was  worshipped, 
plainly  as  "  Zeus  the  Farmer,"  "Zeus  Georgos" 

But  greater  than  these  and  other  anniversaries  were 
the  Panathenaea,  which  Pheidias  and  his  craftsmen  have 
so  nobly  commemorated  —  Elgin  Marbles  —  :  here  man- 
datory ecstasy  is  prescribed.  But  this  is  not  our  concern. 


294  TESTIMONIUM  ANIMUS 

Athens  was,  in  genuine  truth,  felt  to  be  the  commonwealth 
of  Athena  herself.  The  exclusive  patriotism,  nay  partic- 
ularism of  the  Athenian  was  fused  with  sentiments  which, 
in  a  way,  we  may  call  religious.  Under  the  jEgis  of  the 
Incarnation  of  Understanding  your  Athenian  begrudged 
not  to  his  duller,  if  brawnier,  neighbor  'yond  Kithairou, 
the  genealogical  local  legends  of  Dionysos  and  the  son  of 
Alkmene,  nor  the  Ismenian  Apollo. 

No,  Athens  and  Attica  belonged  to,  in  fact,  were,  in  a 
certain  definite  and  privileged  manner,  the  possession  of 
the  virgin  goddess.  And  all  the  art  work  in  the  foremost 
sanctuary  of  the  commonwealth  bore  on  the  legend  of  her 
genesis.  To  recount  amid  joyous  celebration  these  local 
legends  in  art,  in  verse,  in  hymnos,  nay  in  pantomimic 
reproduction — these  things  constituted  not  a  small  part 
of  the  worship,  so-called,  of  the  Hellenic  world.  "Sacred 
to  Athena  is  both  the  rest  of  the  city  and  all  the  land  (the 
Attic  peninsula)  likewise  —  for  all  those  also  who  have 
an  established  usage  to  worship  other  divinities  in  the 
country  districts  (the  "  Demes  "),  in  not  any  less  degree 
do  they  hold  Athena  in  honor"  (Paus.,  1,26,  6),  "and 
the  most  sacred  in  common,  established  many  years 
before  they  were  united  out  of  the  country  districts,  is 
the  statue  of  Athena  in  the  present  acropolis,  but  then 
called  polis  ;  and  rumor  has  it  that  it  fell  from  Heaven," 
as  did  that  of  Artemis  in  Ephesus,  Acts  19,  35. 

But  this  is  not  an  antiquarian  book.  In  all  of  Pausanias 
I  have  found  few  utterances  as  significant  for  our  common 
purpose  as  this  one,  of  a  sanctuary  of  Pan  at  Megalopolis 
(8,  37,  11) :  "  And  like  unto  the  most  powerful  of  the 
gods  this  Pan  also  shares  in  the  power  of  bringing  the 
desires  of  men  to  fulfilment  and  to  practise  on  the 
wicked  such  retribution  as  is  meet."  A  perpetual  fire  is 
kept  burning  before  this  Arcadian  deity. 

This  utilitarian  view  at  once  brings  us  to  the  oracles : 
where  people  ascertained  what  was  profitable  to  do,  and 
what  wise  to  leave  undone.  Were  they  all  mere  anti- 
quarian curiosities  in  the  time  of  Pausanias?  When  the 
giants  of  the  dying  Roman  republic  were  struggling  for 


ACTUAL  WORSHIP  IN  GREEK  COMMUNITIES     295 

the  control  of  the  Mediterranean  world,  Pharsalos-time 
48  B.C.,  Delphi  was  virtually  closed  (Lucan,  "  De  Bella 
Civili").  Men  were  wont  to  repair  thither  in  times  of 
drought  or  failure  of  crops,  childlessness,  chronic  disease,  or 
the  problems  of  new  enterprise,  and  large  political  issues. 

In  150  or  so,  A.D.,  when  Pausanias  recorded  things, 
these  oracles,  in  the  main,  were  memories  and  antiquarian 
matter  for  local  conoscenti.  A  few,  however,  seem  to 
have  survived  in  a  practical  way. 

One  of  these  was  that  of  Patrai  on  western  opening  of 
the  Gulf  of  Corinth :  "  An  oracle  is  there  free  from  deceit, 
not  indeed  for  every  kind  of  matter,  but  in  connection 
with  the  ailing.  They  attach  a  mirror  to  a  string  of  the 
fine  ones  and  then  let  it  down,  computing  that  it  shall 
not  enter  the  spring  any  further  but  only  as  much  as  to 
touch  the  water  with  the  disk  of  the  mirror.  Thereafter, 
having  prayed  to  the  Goddess  (Demeter)  and  having 
burned  incense,  they  look  into  the  mirror  and  the  mirror 
shows  to  them  the  sick  person  either  living  or  dead  "  (7, 
21,  12). 

Still  also  there  survived  an  oracle  of  Apollo  at  Argos 
in  the  day  of  Pausanias  (2, 24,  1) :  "A  woman  gives  out  the 
utterances  to  the  public,  a  woman  who  keeps  from  the 
couch  of  male  persons:  and  when  a  ewe-lamb  is  sacrificed 
at  night,  each  month  the  woman  tastes  of  the  blood  and 
becomes  possessed  of  the  god." 

At  Lebadeia,  too,  it  seems  the  oracle  of  Trophonios  was 
still  at  the  service  of  those  who  sought  it  (9,  39,  5  sqq."). 
The  visitor  keeps  himself  pure  and  bathes  in  the  river 
Herkyna  —  warm  baths  are  forbidden  —  he  sacrifices  to 
Trophonios  and  to  the  sons  of  Trophonios,  also  to  Apollo 
and  to  Kronos  and  Zeus  the  King,  and  to  Hera,  holder  of 
reins  and  to  Demeter,  surnamed  Europe,  nurse,  once,  of 
Trophonios.  And  at  every  sacrifice  a  professional  sooth- 
sayer inspects  the  entrails,  and  then  he  prophesies  to  him 
who  descends,  whether  Trophonios  will  receive  him  be- 
nignantly  and  graciously,  and  so  forth. 

But  let  us  briefly  traverse  Hellas,  guided  by  the  travelling 
and  pious  antiquarian. 


296  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

The  chief  object  in  worship  was  the  agalma,  or  figure  of 
the  deity  worshipped.  From  the  first  meaning  of  the 
word  clearly  it  is  an  object  which  causes  men  to  rejoice, 
or  a  splendid  and  beatific  object ;  here  it  was  that  thing 
which  bestowed  on  the  place  of  worship  its  beauty  and  its 
joyfulness  —  essentially  images,  types,  forms,  representa- 
tions. The  temple  was  conceived  ("Pollux")  as  an  abode 
in  which  the  god  dwells,  sacred,  holy,  consecrated,  not  to 
be  profaned.  Groves  and  sacred  precincts  were  similarly 
set  apart.  Often  they  had  the  right  of  asylum. 

It  seems  the  setting  up  or  establishing  of  the  agalma 
was  the  essential  thing.  Sometimes  it  was  brought  from 
afar,  and  the  worship,  may  we  say,  migrated  with  it. 

Sculptors  of  these  idols  the  Greeks  ("  Pollux,"  1,  12) 
sometimes  called  "god-makers,"  "  god-moulders." 

Gods  are  said  ("Pollux,"  1,  23  *<?.)  to  be  "above  the 
heavens,  in  the  heavens,  on  the  earth,  in  the  sea,  under 
ground,  holding  the  hearth,  holding  the  city,  ancestral,  of 
the  clan  or  kin,  of  the  market,  of  the  harvest,  of  the  camp, 
propitious,  who  turn  away  evil,  who  free  from  trouble, 
who  cleanse  and  purify,  who  put  to  flight,  saviours,  who 
bestow  safety,  who  attend  birth,  who  attend  espousal  and 
wedlock,  who  protect  the  grape."  To  Zeus  alone  belongs 
the  epithet "  bestower  of  rain  "  (uerio?),  "  the  descending 
one.  .  .  ." 

And  in  worship  men  "  wash  themselves  («5.,  25),  they 
purify  themselves,  they  come  forward  in  new  garments, 
pray  to  the  gods,  raise  on  high  their  hands,  are  said  to  call 
down  the  gods,  to  call  up  the  gods,  to  ask  boons  from  the 
gods,  sacrifice,  sing  paeans,  sing  hymnos,  give  initial  por- 
tion, burn  incense,  libate,  hang  up  garlands,  myrtle 
branches,  bring  cakes."  Joyous  "screaming"  is  per- 
mitted to  women  only.  And  the  victims  must  be  "  sound, 

straight-limbed,  not    mutilated,  twisted,  nor   disfigured. 
>j 

In  all  this  I  said  the  figure  of  god  and  goddess  is  the 
principal  thing.  And  if  I  read  Pausanias  aright,  it  was 
not  always  the  most  perfect  productions  of  Greek  art  that 
were  the  most  holy  or  most  highly  honored  by  the  wor- 


ACTUAL  WORSHIP  IN  GREEK  COMMUNITIES     297 

shipper,  but  these  were  the  older  or  oldest  one,  originally 
carved  out  of  wood,  scraped  and  polished,  hence  the  name 
Xoanon  (£davov,  f«o). 

In  the  Academy  (says  Pausanias)  (near  Athens)  is  a 
small  temple  of  Dionysos,  into  which  they  carry  the 
agalma  of  Dionysos  of  Eleutherai  (1,  29,  2)  every  year 
on  stated  days  :  perhaps  the  grape  came  into  Attica  from 
Boeotia  through  that  hamlet. 

The  Acharnians  in  Attica  call  Dionysos  also  Ivy  (Kissos), 
saying  that  the  plant  ivy  first  appeared  there  (1,  31,  6). 

Peaks  and  tops  or  crests  of  mountains  or  mountain 
ranges  often  had  altars  under  the  open  sky,  to  Zeus :  on 
Hymettos  there  was  an  agalma  of  the  Hymettian  Zeus,  and 
an  altar  of  Zeus  Ombrios,  who  sheds  rain  (1,  32,  2).  A 
similar  altar  on  Parnes.  On  the  highest  points  they  felt 
nearest  to  him  :  high  places. 

The  people  of  Oropos  on  the  Sound  first  established  the 
custom  to  consider  the  prophet  Amphiaraos  a  god,  and 
later  all  the  Greeks  took  up  this  belief  (1,  34,  2). 

In  Sikyon  our  traveller  found  a  very  old  temple  of 
Apollo  Lykios  (of  the  wolves),  quite  decayed  then.  "  For 
when  once  upon  a  time  wolves  made  visits  to  their  sheep- 
folds  so  that  there  was  no  profit  from  the  latter,  the  god 
having  named  a  certain  spot  where  lay  a  dry  piece  of 
wood,  of  this  piece  of  wood  he  gave  them  oracle  that  they 
should  expose  the  bark  and  some  meat  at  the  same  time 
for  the  beasts.  And  them  immediately  as  they  had  tasted, 
the  bark  destroyed;  and  that  wood  lay  in  the  sanctuary 
of  Lykios,  but  what  kind  of  tree  it  was,  not  even  the  exe- 
getes  of  the  Sikyonians  understood  "  (2,  9,  7). 

A  temple  of  Asklepios  was  at  Sikyon  :  the  local  legend 
was  that  the  god  of  healing,  in  the  shape  of  a  serpent,  was 
transported  from  Epidaurus,  on  a  chariot  drawn  by  a  team 
of  mules  (2,  10,  3).  The  priestess  of  Aphrodite  there  ($., 
2,  10,  4)  must  keep  herself  sexually  pure  :  she  is  attended 
by  a  virgin  who  serves  for  one  year  :  these  two  alone  are 
permitted  to  enter  in.  The  worshippers  must  be  content 
with  seeing  the  goddess  from  the  entrance  and  directing 
their  prayers  to  her  from  that  point, 


298  TESTBfONIUM 

In  a  grove  some  miles  from  Sikyon  there  was  a  sanctu- 
ary of  Demeter  and  her  daughter  :  the  men  keep  the  an- 
niversary festival  by  themselves,  and  the  women  have  set 
apart  for  their  worship  a  separate  apartment  (2,  11,  3). 

Of  venerable  Tiryns  but  the  walls  were  then  standing, 
cyclopean  walls.  On  Mount  Arachnaios  near  by,  there 
"  are  altars  of  Zeus  and  Hera  :  when  they  have  need  of 
rain,  they  sacrifice  there"  (2,  25,  10).  Epidauros  is  the 
chief  abode  of  Asklepios.  Within  the  sacred  precincts  of 
the  grove  certain  things  are  forbidden  :  both  childbirth 
and  death  defile  the  place,  as  in  Delos.  Inscriptions 
abound  of  men  and  women  who  have  been  healed,  the 
diseases  also  recounted,  and  the  fashion  of  the  cure  ac- 
complished (2,  27,  1  *<?<?.)•  The  serpents  there  are  per- 
fectly tame. 

At  Hermione  in  Argolis  there  is  a  temple  of  Aphrodite 
where  maids  and  widows  must  sacrifice  before  the  nuptials 
(2,  34,  12). 

From  Helos  in  Lacedsemon,  not  far  from  the  mouth  of 
the  Eurotas  River,  they  carry  a  wooden  idol  of  Demeter's 
daughter  annually  on  stated  days  to  the  Eleusinion  (3,  20, 
7).  

Near  Eleusis  in  Attica  they  showed  the  spot  where 
Pluton  descended  to  the  lower  world  with  the  ravished 
maiden  (1,  38,  4). 

At  Megara  they  show  a  stone  on  which  Apollo  laid  his 
lyre  when  he  assisted  Alkathos  in  building  the  walls  of 
that  city  (1,  42,  2).  The  temples  often  contained  a  number 
of  agalmata  of  the  same  divinity,  where,  as  I  have  said, 
the  more  or  most  ancient  seem  to  have  been  considered  and 
honored  with  more  awe  than  later  productions,  though 
sculptured  or  cast  by  the  foremost  artists,  such  as  Pheidias, 
Myron,  Praxiteles,  or  Lysippos. 

In  Megara  Hadrian  the  emperor  had,  not  long  before, 
restored  the  old  brick  temple  of  Apollo  in  marble  :  our 
traveller  saw  three  wooden  idols  (xoana)  of  Apollo  there  : 
all  were  carved  of  ebony. 

At  Corinth  there  is  a  subterranean  shrine  of  the  marine 


ACTUAL  WORSHIP  IN  GREEK  COMMUNITIES     299 

deity  Palaimon  :  whatever  Corinthian  or  stranger  here 
swears  a  false  oath,  he  can  in  no  wise  escape  the  fatal  con- 
sequences (2,  2,  1). 

Even  when  the  ancient  wooden  idols  decayed,  the  ven- 
eration of  local  religion  preserved  whatever  portion  was 
sound,  and  replaced  the  other  portions  with  marble  or 
other  enduring  stuff.  So  at  Corinth  :  "Athena  of  the 
Bridle  "  (who  assisted  Bellerophontes  in  putting  the  bit 
on  Pegasus)  was  a  wooden  agalma,  "  but  her  countenance 
and  hands  and  extremities  of  feet  are  of  white  stone  " 
(2,  4,  1). 

And  this,  too,  is  notable :  that  no  sesthetical  enthusiasm 
displaced  these  ancient  objects  of  worship  —  nay  that  even 
cruder  and  ruder  figures  of  still  greater  antiquity  were  in 
no  wise  removed.  In  Corinth  Pausanias  saw  an  idol  of 
Zeus  Meilichios  (the  Gracious)  and  of  "  Artemis  of  the 
Fathers,"  "made  with  no  art  whatever;  for  to  a  pyramid 
is  Meilichios  likened,  and  she  to  a  pillar  "  (2,  9,  6),  idols 
long  antedating  the  destruction  of  the  Isthmian  emporium 
by  the  legions  of  Memmius  in  146  B.C. 

The  insinuating  worship  of  Sexual  Pleasure,  as  anti- 
quarians abundantly  know,  came  into  the  Hellenic  world 
through  Tyrian  traders,  particularly  where  the  marts  and 
the  factories  of  their  commercial  ventures  carried  their 
merchantmen.  So  at  Corinth  there  was  an  Aphrodite  of 
gold  and  ivory  made  by  Kanachos  of  Sikyon  (fl.  480  B.C.) 
—  an  Aphrodite  carrying  the  starred  heavens  (TTO'XO?) 
upon  her  head :  in  one  of  her  hands  she  carries  a  pome- 
granate, in  the  other  a  poppy,  matters  of  obvious  symbo- 
lism symbolizing  fecundity. 

At  Phlius,  Hebe  was  particularly  worshipped:  on  their 
castle-hill  there  was  a  grove  of  cypress  and  in  it  a  "  very 
venerable  sanctuary  of  old,"  in  honor  of  this  daughter  of 
Hera;  Hebe  before  was  called  Ganymeda  (2,  13,  3).  In 
the  great  Heraion,  or  sanctuary  of  Hera,  at  Argos,  there 
were  two  idols  of  that  sister  and  spouse  of  Zeus,  both  more 
ancient  than  the  colossal  figure  of  gold  and  ivory  wrought 
by  Polykleitos :  this  oldest  one  once  placed  as  anathema 
at  Tiryns,  and  brought  back  by  the  Argives  when  they 


300  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

destroyed  that  town.  This  oldest  of  the  three  idols 
was  of  wood  of  the  pear  tree.  Hadrian  dedicated  in 
this  noted  shrine  a  peacock  of  gold  and  precious  stones 
(2,  17,  5). 

On  the  highest  point  of  the  citadel  of  Argos  (the 
Larisa)  Pausanias  observed  a  shrine  of  Zeus  (Larissean 
Zeus):  the  roof  had  disappeared;  the  wooden  idol  of  the 
god  was  no  longer  standing  upon  its  base. 

At  Troezen  in  Argolis  the  spot  was  shown  where 
Dionysos  brought  his  mother  Semele  up  from  the  lower 
world  (2,  31,  2).  Near  Troezen,  on  the  seacoast,  the  spot 
was  shown  where  once  Aithra  submitted  to  the  embraces 
of  Poseidon,  having  been  lured  to  a  ritual  errand  by  a 
deceptive  dream  sent  by  Athena  (2,  33,  1). 

This  fusing  of  local  pride  and  legend  in  the  tenacious 
marking  of  these  spots  is  a  veritable  feature  in  the  account 
of  Pausanias:  they  showed  the  precise  locality  where 
Heracles  came  back  from  Hades  bearing  the  Hell-hound, 
where  Pluton  descended  with  Demeter's  fair  daughter, 
where  Dionysos  went  down  to  bring  his  mother  to 
Olympos,  the  spring  where  Hera  once  a  year  took  a  bath 
and  became  a  maiden  once  more;  the  spot  in  Laconica 
where  Castor  and  Pollux  were  born :  where  Rhea  gave 
birth  to  Poseidon,  where  Hera  was  reared,  viz.,  at  Stym- 
phalos  in  Arcadia  ;  —  where  Zeus  was  nurtured. 


At  Thebes  were  shown  very  old  wooden  idols  of 
Aphrodite,  assigned  to  the  Tyrian  founders  themselves 
(9, 16,  3).  I  close  this  section  with  some  notice  of  the  pan- 
tomimic element  in  the  anniversary  celebrations,  an  element 
which  contributed  greatly  to  the  perpetuation  of  the  local 
worship  of  Hellenic  communities.  At  Tanagra  annually 
the  comeliest  youth  is  chosen,  and  this  one  on  the  anniver- 
sary celebration  in  honor  of  Hermes  walks  about  the  entire 
circumference  of  the  town  walls,  having  a  lamb  on  his 
shoulders:  why?  Because  once  upon  a  time  Hermes 
turned  away  a  pestilence  from  Tanagra  by  carrying  a  ram 
around  the  walls  (9,  22,  1). 


At  Platsea  they  represent  once  in  six  years  how  the  rec- 
onciliation between  Zeus  and  Hera  was  at  one  time  accom- 
plished. Hera,  as  often,  was  estranged  on  account  of  his 
ever  recurrent  amours :  Zeus,  advised  by  Kithairon  (then 
ruler  at  Platsea),  wrapped  a  figure  and  concealed  it  on  a 
cart  drawn  by  oxen,  saying  that  he  was  bringing  home  a 
new  wife.  Hera,  informed  of  it,  overtook  the  team,  but 
discovered  to  her  great  satisfaction  merely  a  wooden  figure. 
Hence  the  Platseans  call  their  commemorative  celebration 
"  Daidala."  They  place  meat,  driving  off  all  other  birds 
but  the  crow:  and  upon  which  tree  in  a  certain  oak  forest 
the  crow  alights,  from  the  trunk  of  this  tree  they  take 
wood  to  make  their  "Daidalon."  The  figure  is  adorned, 
conveyed  to  the  Asopos  River,  and  set  upon  a  wagon :  then 
there  is  a  procession  up  Kithairon,  where  sacrifices  and 
feasting  were  made. 

But  why  go  further  ?  Spiritual  elements  ?  Hardly. 
And  we  see  that  spirit,  in  which  the  epics  of  old  were 
sung,  prevailed  and  persevered  somehow.  The  people 
themselves  were  not  touched  by  the  sterner  and  nobler 
movements  of  Greek  philosophy,  particularly  as  it  found 
expression  in  the  soul-theories  of  Pythagoras  and  Plato, 
or  as  the  moralizing  analysis  of  Stoic  allegory  dissolved 
the  figures  of  Olympus  into  cosmic  elements.  A  small 
elite  followed  Plutarch.  One  of  the  last  deities  in  the 
penumbra  of  Hellenic  worship  or  religion  was  Hadrian's 
favorite  concubine,  Antinoos.  This  boy,  a  native  of 
Bithynia,  perished  in  the  Nile,  in  130  A.D.  His  imperial 
master  founded  in  his  honor  the  town  of  Antinoupolis: 
had  idols  bearing  his  portrait  set  up  throughout  the 
Roman  Empire,  and  even  called  a  star  by  his  name:  Zeus 
himself  could  not  have  done  more  for  Ganymede.  All  of 
which  was  entirely  germane  to  and  profoundly  consistent 
with  the  spirit  and  essence  of  Greek  religion,  so-called. 
There  never  was  a  very  great  chasm  between  the  Greek 
men  and  the  Greek  gods  such  as  the  men  had  made  from 
their  own  image  (cf.  Paus.,  8,  9,  7)  mere  outriggers  in  the 
ship  of  life  and  living. 


302  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

A  closer  vision  now  of  certain  elements  of  Greek  ritual. 
Clearly  these  acts  are  everything,  as  Bacon  tersely  put  it 

—  one  could  hold  any  notions  as  to  the  substance  of  these 
anthropomorphic  forces  and  legends,  provided  one  shared 
in  the  ritual.     And  here,  I  take  it,  tradition  was  much,  if 
not  everything,  determined  largely  by  the  particular  given 
community.     The   priest  was,  then,  an  expert  in  ritual, 
chiefly.    Even  the  Stoics  in  their  definition  seem  to  have 
followed  closely  in  the  lines  of  what  always  and  every- 
where had  been  established  in  the  Greek  world  (Stob., 
"Eclog.,"   2,   122):      "And  they  (the   Stoics)   say  that 
the  character  of  Priest  also  was  held  by  the  Wise  Man 
only,  and  by  no  worthless  man  at  all"  (as  ordinarily  no 
doubt  it  often  was).     "  For  the  priest  must  be  an  expert 
in  the  established  usages  concerning  sacrifices  and  prayers 
and  purifications  and  installations  and  all  such  things,  and 
in  addition  thereto  also  an  expert  in  other  things,  on  ac- 
count of  the  need  of  piety  and  experience  of  the  service 
(0e/ja7reia9)  of  the  gods,  and  to  be  within  the  divine  na- 
ture "  (lit.  CITO?  elvai  TT)<?  <£i*reo>?  rfy  Betas  —  to  hold  an 
intrinsic  or  intimate  knowledge  of  the  essence  of  the  given 
god,  I  take  it). 

But  we  are  even  more  fortunate  than  in  our  possession 
of  the  antiquarian  data  gathered  by  the  traveller  Pausanias 

—  a  still  closer  vision  is  possible  for  us:  we  may  still  read 
the  records  chiselled  by  direction  of  communities,  brother- 
hoods, families,  officials,  —  dealing  with   their  own  con- 
cerns, bringing  before  us  their  point  of  view,  and  permitting 
us  to  employ  a  real  historical  consideration. 

I  have  availed  myself  of  Wilhelm  Dittenberger's  "  Syl- 
loge  In&criptionum  Grrcecarum,"  Vol.  2,  Leipzig,  Hirzel,  1900. 
And  I  believe  I  will  serve  my  readers  best  by  content- 
ing myself  with  a  certain  arrangement  and  orderly  pres- 
entation. 

The  usages  of  rites  and  ritual  offer  no  new  revelation : 
the  supreme  consideration  is  that  men  must  conserve,  and 
faithfully  reproduce  and  reenact,  all  sacred  forms,  and 
ceremonies  must  be  "  in  accordance  with  the  ways  of  the 


ACTUAL  WORSHIP  IN  GREEK  COMMUNITIES     303 

fathers  "  (/eara  ra  irdrpia,  No.  560),  "  the  paternal  rites  " 
"  to  the  gods,  to  whom "  (to  sacrifice)  "  was  ancestral 
usage"  (635).  Thus  sounds  the  voice  of  Eleusis  in 
Attica,  of  the  isle  of  Chios,  or  where  Doric  Rhodes  wor- 
shipped her  Sun  god ;  so  they  ordained  at  Kos,  at  Delphi, 
navel  of  the  world,  in  the  emporium  of  Attica's  Piraeus, 
everywhere. 

The  worshipper  should  consider  his  fitness:  at  Kos 
proclamation  shall  be  made  (No.  616)  that  the  worshipper 
shall  "  keep  himself  pure  from  female  and  from  male  for 
a  night.  ..."  Into  the  sacred  enclosure  of  Alektrona 
(daughter  of  Helios  and  of  the  nymph  Rhodos)  (No.  560) 
it  is  unholy  that  there  should  enter  horse,  ass,  mule,  "  nor 
any  animal  whatever  that  has  a  bushy  tail,  nor  shall  any 
one  bring  into  the  sacred  enclosure  any  of  these,  nor  shall 
he  bring  in  shoes,  nor  anything  pertaining  to  swine.  And 
whenever  any  one  act  contrary  to  the  law,  he  shall  cleanse 
the  sanctuary  and  the  sacred  enclosure,  and  offer  sacrifices 
besides,  or  he  shall  be  liable  for  impiety."  On  the  isle  of 
Astypalaia:  "  Into  the  sanctuary  there  shall  not  enter  in 
whosoever  is  not  pure  nor  of  perfect  body,  or  it  will  be  in 
his  mind"  (563). 

Again,  at  Pergamon  (566):  "They  shall  keep  them- 
selves pure  and  they  shall  enter  into  the  temple  of  the 
god,  both  the  citizens  and  all  the  others,  from  their  own 
wives  and  from  their  own  husbands  the  same  day,  but 
from  the  wife  of  another  man  or  husband  of  another 
woman  for  two  days,  having  bathed  themselves;  and  like- 
wise also  from  mourning  for  the  dead  and  from  a  woman 
in  childbirth  for  the  duration  of  two  days;  but  from  burial 
and  the  exequies  of  the  dead  after  they  have  been  sprinkled 
with  holy  water  (jrepipaivo^ai)  and  after  they  have  trav- 
ersed the  gate  where  the  means-of-purification  (dyurrijpia) 
are  placed,  clean  the  same  day." 

On  a  slab  found  near  Sunion  the  following  was  once 
carved  (633) :  "  And  shall  bring  on  no  one  uncleaned  ; 
and  he  shall  be  purified  from  garlic  and  pork  and  females; 
and  having  bathed  head-downwards  they  shall  come  in  the 
same  day.  And  woman  not  less  than  seven  days  after  her 


304  TESTIMONIUM  ANIM.E 

monthly  flow,  having  bathed  from  her  head  downward, 
shall  enter  the  same  day,  and  from  a  corpse  after  lapse 
of  ten  days,  and  from  spontaneous  abortion  forty  days. 
And  no  one  shall  sacrifice  without  him  who  established 
the  sanctuary:  but  if  any  one  does  so  by  force,  the  sacri- 
fice is  not  acceptable  at  the  hands  of  the  god." 

In  the  elaborate  statutes  (653)  for  the  cult  of  Demeter 
at  Andania  in  Messenia  the  following  may  be  noted:  the 
men  and  women  tested  and  approved  for  participation  in 
the  mystic  rites,  even  in  the  procession  —  these  are  desig- 
nated as  sacred  or  consecrated  (te/>of).  They  must  swear 
in  advance  that  they  will  conform  to  the  written  regu- 
lations. Those  initiated  in  the  mysteries  shall  stand 
unshod  and  they  shall  be  garbed  in  white ;  the  women 
shall  not  wear  robes  of  transparent  texture.  Women  who 
wished  to  qualify  for  participation  had  to  swear  to  their 
marital  fidelity. 

Girls,  too,  must  not  wear  anything  transparent.  Golden 
trinkets,  face  paint,  and  ribbons  for  binding  up  tresses 
were  forbidden.  The  whole  festal  season  is  called  a 
panegyris  —  a  kind  of  fair,  indeed.  Tents  must  be  pitched 
in  such  a  way  that  they  may  be  freely  inspected.  No 
couches  are  permitted  in  the  tents.  Silence  must  prevail 
during  ritual  acts.  Twenty  staff-bearers  must  be  obeyed 
by  all.  The  furnishing  of  the  victims  to  go  to  the  lowest 
bidder. 

In  no  case  do  we  learn  that  the  prayers  had  any  spirit- 
ual concern:  often  they  were  in  behalf  of  the  crops  (virep 
Kapirov)  or,  on  behalf  of  people  and  senate,  for  their 
health  and  well-being  (636). 

The  victims  must  be  sound,  well-grown,  without  blem- 
ish, or  they  must  even  excel  by  positive  fairness  or  beauty; 
the  choice  often  delegated  to  a  specific  commission. 

As  to  priests  and  their  perquisites:  at  Pergamos  (592) 
the  priesthood  of  Asklepios  is  decreed,  by  people  and 
senate,  to  belong  to  Asklepiades  and  his  descendants  for- 
ever :  to  them  also  should  belong  the  priesthood  of  the 
other  gods  established  in  the  same  temple.  The  priest 
in  active  service  always  to  wear  a  wreath.  The  per- 


ACTUAL  WORSHIP  IN  GREEK  COMMUNITIES     305 

quisites  (ye'pa)  to  be  the  right  thigh  and  the  skins  and 
certain  other  portions.  Also  he  receives  immunity  from 
all  communal  burdens  or  services. 

In  an  inscription  of  Asia  Minor,  if  we  follow  Ditten- 
berger's  restoration  (594)  even  a  boy  may  purchase  the 
priesthood  there  discussed.  Priest  to  keep  the  inner 
temple  in  order.  Income  to  begin  with  a  month  named. 
The  purchase  price  was  named.  At  Kos  the  treasurers 
(of  the  community)  shall  sell  the  priesthood  of  the  wine- 
god  on  the  sixteenth  of  a  stated  moon:  "and  she  who 
purchases  shall  be  healthy  and  whole,  and  not  younger 
than  ten  years:  and  she  will  be  priest  for  life  .  .  .  she 
shall  be  permitted  to  appoint  a  subpriestess,  who  is  of  the 
commonwealth.  ..."  (598). 

To  another  town  "  he  who  purchases  the  priesthood  of 
Artemis  of  Perge  will  present  as  priestess  a  woman- 
citizen  descended  from  citizens  on  both  sides  for  three 
generations  both  from  father  and  from  mother ;  and  she 
who  shall  purchase  shall  be  priestess  for  her  own  life  and 
she  shall  perform  the  sacrifices  both  private  and  public, 
and  she  shall  receive  of  public  sacrifices  from  each  victim 
a  thigh  and  what  goes  regularly  with  the  thigh,  and  one- 
fourth  of  the  inner  parts  and  the  skins ;  and  of  private 
sacrifices  she  will  receive  a  thigh  and  what  goes  regularly 
with  the  thigh,  and  one-fourth  of  the  inner  parts"  (601), 
..."  and  the  priestess  shall  make  supplication  every 
first  of  the  month  in  behalf  of  the  commonwealth,  receiv- 
ing a  drachma  from  the  commonwealth."  These  economic 
details  are  often  given  with  great  explicitness. 

The  oracles  were  not  much  resorted  to  during  the  in- 
clement season :  "  The  priest  of  Amphiaraos  (598)  shall 
attend  the  sanctuary  when  the  winter  has  gone  by,  until 
the  time  of  ploughing,  making  no  intermission  of  more 
than  three  days,  and  shall  remain  in  the  sanctuary  not 
less  than  ten  days  in  each  month.  ..."  At  Dodona 
there  were  leaden  tablets  passed  in  by  the  inquirers:  on 
one  of  these  (794)  a  husband  would  know  "  about  off- 
spring, whether  there  will  *be  any  child  from  his  wife 
Aigle,  with  whom  he  is  living  at  the  present  time.  ..." 


306  TESTIMOXIUM  ANBLE 

A  woman  (795)  asks  to  which  god  she  was  to  sacrifice  to 
be  freed  from  her  ailment. 

A  father  would  know  of  Zeus  and  Diona  (797)  whether 
he  is  not  the  father  of  the  child  with  which  Annyla  is  now 
pregnant.  Another  would  ascertain  whether  sheep  rais- 
ing will  prove  a  profitable  venture  (799). 

Three  written  forms  of  disposing  of  certain  temple-land 
at  Eleusis :  these  shall  be  sealed  in  three  jars,  and  then 
three  delegates  (789)  shall  go  to  Delphi  and  gain  from 
Apollo  there  a  determination  as  to  which  of  the  jars  con- 
tain the  direction  which  the  commonwealth  of  Athens 
shall  follow,  to  the  end  that  the  commonwealth  shall  act 
in  the  premises  "  in  the  most  pious  way  as  regards  the  two 
goddesses.  ..." 

Worship  is,  after  all,  a  form  of  communal  utterance  and 
a  species  of  membership  in  a  given  commonwealth.  The 
spirit  often  is  that  of  jealous  pride,  nay  of  a  certain  ex- 
clusiveness.  Thus  at  Kos  there  are  maintained  not  only 
the  three  tribes  of  pristine  Doric  ascription,  but  a  new 
list  is  to  be  prepared  of  those  who  possess  the  privilege  of 
sharing  (614)  in  the  sacred  rites  of  Apollo.  Only  such 
may  draw  lots  for  the  priesthood. 

To  exhibit  the  local  pride  of  given  communities  in  cer- 
tain forms  of  worship  and  certain  specific  deities,  one  ex- 
ample must  serve  for  many.  At  Ephesus,  even  under 
Roman  sway  there  is  no  abatement  of  the  ancient  feeling 
concerning  Artemis  (Acts  19,  24-41).  "She  who  is  the 
tutelary  power  of  our  community"  (656),  so  that  even 
the  Roman  proconsul  voices  this  in  an  official  edict,  of  the 
time  of  the  Antonines.  The  Roman  proconsul  in  this 
manifesto  determines  the  days  of  sacred  peace  when  all 
litigation  must  slumber.  That  goddess,  then,  is  "  not  only 
honored  in  her  own  ancestral  community  (ev  ry  eatm}? 
TraT/n'St)  which  she  has  rendered  more  famous  than  all  the 
cities  through  her  own  divinity,  but  also  among  Greeks  and 
Barbarians,  so  that  in  many  places  sanctuaries  and  sacred 
enclosures  have  been  consecrated  to  her  ...  on  account 
of  the  palpable  acts  of  epiphany  (self-revelation  to  men) 


ACTUAL  WORSHIP  IN  GREEK  COMMUNITIES     307 

which  have  been  enacted  by  her  ..."  therefore  the  en- 
tire moon  bearing  her  name  shall  be  particularly  conse- 
crated to  her,  with  games  and  a  fair. 


A  word  as  to  the  brotherhoods  or  sodalities  devoted  to 
specific  forms  of  worship  or  ritual.  But  we  must  not  take 
them  too  seriously,  these  orgeones  (workers  of  ritual) 
or  0mcr<HTcu,  sharers  or  members  of  a  processional  band, 
as  those  of  Aphrodite  (726),  who  probably,  with  not  a 
little  of  mimic  acts,  reproduced  the  love  of  the  Cyprian 
and  Syrian  goddess  —  Shakespeare's  "  Venus  and  Adonis  " 
(726).  They  were  clubs,  too,  with  fixed  contributions 
and  officials.  The  treasurer  of  the  Dionysiastai  repaired 
the  temple  of  the  Wine-god.  A  sacrificial  fund  (728) 
was  endowed  by  them.  They  voted  priesthood  (729): 
they  paid  for  an  agalma.  Some  had  a  burial  fund  for 
members,  and  praised  (731)  a  treasurer  for  paying  it  out 
promptly.  They  constituted  units  of  ritual  influence  and 
usage,  and  seem  to  have  done  not  a  little  canvassing  and 
wire-pulling  in  landing  their  man  in  some  sacerdotal  office, 
as  we  would  say  in  the  United  States. 

At  Kos  there  was  made  a  bequest  of  property  (834) ; 
there  was  to  be  maintained  annually  a  mimic  enactment 
of  the  espousals  of  Herakles  —  figures  and  a  dramatic 
presentation  —  the  chief  celebrant  seems  to  have  held  the 
role  of  Hercules :  behold  the  vigorous  love  for  local  legend, 
forms  of  family  pride  comparable  to  the  Potitii  and  Pinarii 
of  ancient  Rome,  the  Eumolpidai  of  Eleusis.  No  bastard 
should  ever  share  in  the  annual  celebration. 

The  monthly  fee  of  the  Jobacchoi  (737)  of  Athens  went 
for  wine.  Why  did  they  call  the  meeting-place  mattress 
(o-n/3a9)?  Because  many  reclined  in  this  drinking  club 
after  the  ritual  of  poculation  had  progressed  somewhat  ? 

Members  were  warned  against "  entering  a  strange  tent " 
—  they  were  exhorted  to  abstain  from  abuse  and  backbit- 
ing at  anniversaries.  They  were  to  settle  their  own  liti- 
gation privately,  outside  of  the  public  courts.  WreatU 
were  brought  for  deceased  members. 


308  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

They  also  heroized  distinguished  deceased  members  by 
votes  and  inscriptional  dedication  —  honored  of  musing 
wayfarers. 

And  this  brings  us  to  the  tombs,  limits  of  life  and  joy 
and,  for  the  Hellenic  spirit,  of  hope.  My  citations  are 
taken  from  the  epigraphic  collections  of  Kumanudes,  the 
antiquarian  of  modern  Athens.  Greek  Catholic  Chris- 
tianity and  the  voices  of  the  Kerameikos :  I  for  one  crave 
no  palingenesis  of  these  notes  of  gloom.  Futile  or  eclec- 
tic must  be  the  suspiria  of  such  Renaissance.  So,  to  at- 
tach our  material  to  the  concluding  item  from  Ditten- 
berger's  collections,  we  learn  that  a  splendid  mausoleum 
was  the  chief  thing  for  "heroizing"  the  departed:  "I, 
Antonia  (No.  2578),  also  called  Socratike,  builded  for 
my  sweetest  husband  Antiochos  this  heroon,  an  end  of  his 
labours.  I  hand  over  to  the  subterrestrial  gods  this 
heroon  to  guard:  to  Pluton  and  Demeter  and  Persephone 
and  to  the  Erinyans  and  to  all  the  subterrestrial  gods. 
But  if  any  one  will  dismantle  this  heroon  or  open  it  or 
cause  any  other  change  whatever,  either  personally  or 
through  another,  to  him  the  earth  shall  withhold  base  for 
his  footstep,  the  sea  for  his  navigation,  but  he  shall  be 
uprooted  with  all  his  stock  —  of  all  evils  shall  he  make 
test,  of  ague  and  fever  tertiary  and  quarternary  and  of 
elephantiasis  and  whatever  evil  and  pernicious  things  oc- 
cur in  the  world,  these  shall  befall  him  who  dares  to  make 
any  change  from  this  heroon."  —  Of  brave  Attic  men 
who  perished  before  Potidaia  (No.  9)  the  Elegy  says  that 
"  A ither  received  their  souls,  their  bodies  the  earth.  .  .  ." 

Often  the  dead  warn  the  living  (131) :  "  Live  thou  well 
the  remnant  of  time  in  life,  knowing  that  below,  the  manse 
of  Pluto  abounds  in  wealth,  though  needing  none  at  all." 
"  Having  had  much  sweet  sport  with  comrades  of  my  own 
age,  having  (1002)  sprouted  from  earth,  earth  have  I 
become  again." 

"  Never  cool  the  wailing  tears  (1148)  of  my  parents, 
for  they  have  lost  the  cheer  of  their  life  and  the  hand 
that  was  to  nurse  them  in  age." 


ACTUAL  WORSHIP  IN  GREEK  COMMUNITIES     309 

A  note  of  hope :  "  Bone  and  flesh  of  the  charming  boy 
has  the  earth,  but  (1825)  the  soul  has  departed  to  the 
chamber  of  the  Pious.  .  .  ."  "  Ye  Spinners  of  Fate,  alas  ! 
laying  on  miserable  children  of  mortals  the  yoke  defying 
escape  through  necessity,  what  for  did  ye  bring  me  forth, 
after  I  had  fled  forth  from  the  bitter  pangs  of  childbirth 
of  her  who  bore  me,  —  to  the  light  of  the  Sun  yearned 
for  ?  Now  I,  leaving  unending  griefs  to  those  who  begot 
me,  at  twenty  I  descended  to  the  awful  abodes  of  those 
who  have  perished." 

Frequently  the  deceased  recorded  his  own  curse  against 
those  who  should  injure  the  place  of  repose :  or  if  in  a 
change  of  title  to  the  land  should  remove  the  bones : 
"  Before  gods  and  Heroes,  whoever  thou  art  who  boldest 
the  plot,  do  thou  not  at  any  time  shift  any  of  these  things, 
and  as  for  the  images  of  these  agalmata  and  honors,  who- 
ever should  destroy  or  remove,  from  him  let  neither  the 
earth  bear  fruit,  nor  the  sea  endure  his  navigation,  and 
wretchedly  shall  they  perish,  they  and  their  stock ;  but 
whoever  would  preserve  (my  remains)  in  their  place,  and 
persevere  in  giving  and  increasing  the  customary  honors, 
many  boons  shall  be  his,  both  his  own  and  his  descend- 
ants' "  :  a  current  formula. 

A  husband  thus  records  the  physical  charms  of  a  wife 
—  the  spirit  of  Hellenism  this :  "  She  who  (3388)  once 
bore  herself  proudly  with  blond  tresses  upon  her  head, 
and  gleaming  with  eyes  ravishing  like  those  of  the  Graces 
distinguished  with  face  and  cheek  like  snow,  and  utter- 
ing delicate  speech  from  sweet  mouth  with  scarlet  lips 
through  ivory  teeth,"  —  a  lover-husband's  farewell,  mani- 
festly. 

A  child  of  seven  (2987)  :  "  and  all  those  rites  which 
are  a  care  to  the  merciful  divinities,  he  (my  father)  did 
not  omit:  for  the  sacrifices  of  Eum£«fNaeftjj  provided  a 
crown  and  so  bestowed  great  fame  on  me  and  a  garland 
of  ivy  the  processional  brethren  of  Dionysos  amid  torches 
which  they  bore,  carried  to  this  my  tomb.  Verily  a  fair 
object  of  honor  am  I,  if  not  false  is  the  saying  of  men, 
that  those  children  die  whom  the  gods  love.  ..." 


310  TESTIMONIUM  ANIMLE 

NOTE.  —  The  work  of  Pausanias,  more  markedly  so  than  that  of 
his  exemplar,  is  cyclopedic,  but  antiquarian,  too :  like  Gellius  the 
Roman  purist  and  devotee  to  archaic  lore,  Pausanias  ignores  in  the 
main  post-classic  objects  and  matters :  it  seems  rash  to  infer  from 
this  that  he  compiled  his  work  from  books  (as  Wilamowitz  assumed 
as  a  young  man). 

His  description  everywhere  deals  with  actualities :  the  enumera- 
tion of  temples  with  roofs  fallen  in,  is  particularly  impressive.  Gen- 
erally his  first  concern  was  as  to  the  Founder.  It  is  impressive  also 
to  realize  how  small  was  the  ecstasy  of  contemporary  notice  of  the 
greatest  Greek  sculptors — in  fact,  Greek  art  was  more  of  an  efflores- 
cence of  a  spirit  singularly  devoted  to  comeliness  than  a  perpetual, 
let  alone  an  ennobling  or  didactic,  force  bearing  on  Greek  culture. 
The  caterpillar  dresses  not  in  the  silk  spun  from  its  own  substance. 

The  strongest  single  impression  that  passes  from  the  work  of 
Pausanias  to  the  comprehension  of  the  reader  is  this,  that  the  actual 
worship  of  the  communities  was  embellished,  but  was  not  essentially 
elevated  by  the  chisel  of  Skopas  and  Praxiteles,  Pheidias,  Myron,  or 
Polykleitos.  If  anything,  Pausanias  tones  down  the  fine  frenzy  of 
your  possessed  archaeologist.  The  mimic  ritual  of  circumscribed 
worship  was,  in  the  main,  still  practised,  in  his  day.  The  washing 
or  bathing  of  the  idols  was  a  noteworthy  ceremony. 

As  to  mimic  reproductions  actually  gone  through  with  on  anniver- 
saries, v.  Paus.,  8,  53,  1  sqq. 

Isis  of  Egypt  had  overrun  Greece  at  that  time.  The  dusk  of  gods 
is  also  the  Blending  and  Fusion  thereof. 

It  may  be  maintained  as  a  thesis  of  Greek  cultural  practices  that 
the  oldest  idol  as  a  rule  was  the  object  of  the  chief  acts  of  devotion : 
how  meteorites  came  to  be  so  honored  is  not  difficult  to  perceive,  e.g. 
at  Orchomenos  (9,  38,  1).  Orchomenos  in  Boeotia  was  once  great 
and  rich :  its  vanishing  and  passing  reminded  Pausanias  of  the  deca- 
dence of  Mykenai  and  Delos  (9,  34,  6).  It  was  here  where  the 
"  worship  "  of  the  Charites  or  Graces  —  personifications  of  what  is 
winsome  —  was  established.  Here  first  sacrifices  (9,  35,  1)  were 
offered  to  them. 

The  progression  from  drapery  to  nudity  among  the  Greeks  came 
not  out  of  any  "  religious  "  movement  as  the  hierophants  of  JEstheti- 
cism  sometimes  hand  down  from  their  various  tripods,  but  through 
the  influence  of  the  great  artists,  such  as  Praxiteles  (as  noted),  before 
whom  even  the  goddess  of  sensuality  was  not  entirely  nude. 

Dittenberger's  Inscription  No.  588  contains  an  account  or  inven- 
tory of  treasures  of  Delos  as  made  by  the  passing  officials  of  that 
sanctuary  or  found  by  those  entering  upon  office.  Many  of  the  gifts 
were  from  royal  persons,  the  sacred  presents  being  costly  rings,  golden 
wreaths,  bars  of  melted  gold,  gold  coin,  goblets,  jewels  of  all  kinds. 
Among  the  givers  were  King  Demetrios,  the  women  of  Delos,  a 
Carthaginian,  Jomilkas,  Antigonos,  sovereign  of  Macedon,  admirer  of 
Zeno  the  Stoic,  Pnytagoras,  a  prince  of  Cyprus,  Greeks  of  the  penin- 


ACTUAL  WORSHIP  IN  GREEK  COMMUNITIES     311 

sula  in  the  Black  Sea,  peninsula  now  called  the  Crimea,  Queen  Stra- 
tonike  of  Syria,  the  people  of  Kos,  men  from  Rhodes,  an  Apulian 
Greek,  Perseus,  last  King  of  Macedon  before  his  accession,  King 
Attalos  of  Pergamon,  a  man  from  Chios,  a  giver  resident  of  Philadel- 
phia, a  citizen  of  Syracuse,  Demetrios,  son  of  Philip  III  of  Macedon, 
Roman  officials  and  provincial  governors,  among  them  T.  Quinctius 
Flamininus,  Scipio  Asiaticus,  King  Eumenes  of  Pergamon,  also  the 
victor  over  Hannibal,  Publius  Cornelius  Scipio,  a  devotee  to  Greek 
culture;  a  man  from  Cumse  in  Italy,  a  visitor  from  Cyrene,  King 
Ptolemy,  founder  of  the  dynasty  (180). 

A  temple  of  Serapis  and  of  Isis  flourished  on  the  island. 


The  term  KareiSwAov  applied  to  Athens  by  St.  Paul,  Acts  17,  16,  is 
overwhelmingly  significant  to  the  reader  who  comes  from  the  perusal 
of  the  first  book  of  Pausanias.  The  revised  version  of  1881  "  as  he 
beheld  the  city  full  of  idols  "  is  both  lexically  and  materially  more 
exact  than  the  King  James  version,  "the  city  wholly  given  to 
idolatry  " :  "  teeming  with,  bristling  with,  covered  with  figures  for 
worship,"  one  might  render  it.  Pausanias  concerns  the  theologian 
much  more,  as  it  seems  to  me  at  least,  than  the  archaeologist.  The 
enumeration  of  agalmata  is  one  of  the  chief  tasks  of  this  traveller  of 
the  Hadrianic  Renaissance. 

The  very  essence,  however,  of  that  drift  and  striving  lies  in  this 
utterance  of  Pausanias  with  which  I  will  bring  this  note  as  well  as 
the  Hellenic  Section  of  my  book  to  termination  (1,  5,  14) :  "  and  in 
my  time  the  emperor  Hadrian  who  has  gone  furthest  in  the  honor 
which  he  showed  to  divinity. 

"  And  all  the  sanctuaries  of  the  gods  which  he  partly  builded  from 
the  beginning,  and  partly  also  adorned  with  sacred  gifts  and  outfit- 
tings  ...  it  is  all  recorded  in  writing  by  him  in  the  common 
sanctuary  of  the  gods." 

Futile  cult  of  agalmata,  one  may  say.  But  futile  also  is  it,  when  in 
our  own  generation  men  have  essayed  to  yoke  up  the  creed  of  St.  Paul 
with  the  Simian  creed.  Futile,  I  say,  to  go  to  the  modern  disciples  of 
Demokritos  and  meekly  beg  of  them  some  minimal  franchise  for 
Religion. 

A  god  to  whom  I  cannot  pray, 

Pray,  what  is  he  to  me? 

Mont  Blanc  is  he,  or  star  afar, 

Pentelic  marble,  Tigris  clay, 

Or  isle  in  southern  sea. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

ROMAN  SPIRIT  AND  ROMAN   CHARACTER 

THERE  was  a  time  when  every  educated  European 
owed  his  education,  in  great  part,  to  the  Roman  people, 
that  is  to  say,  to  a  long  and  thorough  study  of  some 
writers  that  have  come  forward  among  the  Romans. 
Time  and  the  Experience  of  Mankind  have,  in  this 
later  generation,  made  up,  by  neglect  and  by  indulgence 
in  shallow  commonplace,  for  that  excess  of  devotion. 
True,  essayists  like  Montaigne  and  Bacon  often  breathe 
a  literary  spirit  but  little  removed  from  Seneca  and 
Cicero  who  nurtured  these  strong  ones.  Even  in  the 
generation  now  passing  from  the  stage,  a  kind  of  cos- 
mopolitan fame  has  fallen  to  Theodor  Mommsen.  Who- 
ever did  in  sweet  youth  listen  to  the  keen  intelligence 
uttering  itself  to  academic  "  hearers  "  in  his  Berlin  audi- 
torium will  never  forget  him.  But  that  other  Holstein 
scholar,  Niebuhr,  was  the  greater  man,  for  he  helped  to 
emancipate  Prussia  from  Napoleon,  Napoleon  indeed,  in 
whom  the  first  Roman  imperator  might  almost  seem  to 
have  had  a  reincarnation.  The  nephew  Louis  deliber- 
ately sought  to  wrap  himself  in  the  toga  of  the  second 
Roman  emperor,  a  new  Augustus  and  saviour  of  social 
order,  and  Friedrich  Ritschl  in  his  day  lent  his  great  name 
to  the  furtherance  of  this  ambition.  0  vanitatum  vanitas 
—  Chiselhurst  and  Zululand.  So  men  strive  to  seat  them- 
selves in  niches  made  by  the  valuation  of  many  anterior 
generations. 

But  what  of  Roman  spirit  and  character  ?  First  of  all, 
the  very  names  furnish  a  significant  exhibit  of  the 
trenchant  and  utter  difference  between  the  Latins  and 

312 


ROMAN  SPIRIT  AND  ROMAN  CHARACTER       313 

the  Greek  nationality.  For  does  not  Nomenclature  in 
a  manner  quite  unique  reveal  the  very  ideals,  spirit,  and 
dearest  convictions  of  those  bestowing  and  bearing  names? 
Thus  the  Greeks  extolled  strength  and  military  prowess : 
Agamemnon  means  Abide-fast,  and  Hektor  is  the  stayer 
in  the  struggle  :  Alexandros  —  what  irony  in  the  seducer 
of  Helena  —  means  Warder-off-of-men.  Agias,  Agesilaos, 
Hegias,  Hegesias,  and  Hegesandros  are  names  of  Leader, 
Leader  of  people,  Leader  of  men.  Comeliness  and  Beauty 
are  the  kernel  in  these  names  :  Kallias,  Fairly  ;  Kalli- 
genes,  Fair-born  ;  Kallibios,  Fair  life  ;  Kallianax,  Fair 
lord ;  Kalliaraos,  Fair  plough  ;  while  Phaidros  and 
Phaidrias  speak  of  beaming  beauty.  The  nationality 
that  deifies  Herakles  and  established  contests  at  untold 
anniversaries  extolled  strength.  Thus  we  have  Alkippos, 
Strong  steed ;  Alkibios  and  Alkibiades,  Strong  life ; 
Alkidamas,  Swaying  with  power ;  Alkimedon,  Strong 
counsellor  ;  while  Alkman  and  Alkmene  mean  Strength 
again. 

Boldness  appears  in  Thrasyllos,  Thrasykles,  and  Thra- 
syleon,  Lion  bold ;  Anakreon  is  Upper-ruler ;  and  Strength 
or  Power  predominate  in  Eurysthenes,  Krates,  Sokrates, 
Polykrates,  Timokrates. 

Great  is  Fame  and  the  acquisition  thereof  :  a  worthy 
ideal  reposes  in  Lysikles,  famous  dissolver  (of  quarrels), 
a  veritable  Make-peace  and  Irenseus  indeed  amid  the 
seething  foam  of  civic  contentiousness.  Eratokles,  Fame- 
beloved  ;  Klearchos,  Famed  ruler  ;  Eukles,  Well-famed  ; 
Pherekydes,  Bearer  of  Renown ;  Eteokles,  True-fame  ; 
Kleophon,  Fame-voiced ;  Polykles,  Much-fame ;  Aristokles, 
Best-fame  ;  and  many  others,  belong  here. 

Of  Battle  and  Bravery  in  arms  are  these  :  Euthymachos, 
Straight-fighting ;  Pisistratos,  Persuader  of  host ;  Straton, 
Hostley  ;  Lysimachos,  Dissolver  of  battle  ;  Nikoma- 
chos,  Victorious-fighter  ;  Menon  and  Memnon,  the  Stayer  ; 
similar  is  Menandros  ;  while  these  deal  with  victory  : 
Nikias,  Nikandros,  Nikobulos. 

Social  rank  is  conveyed  in  all  names  dealing  with  the 
steed  —  think  of  the  Pheidian  youths  mounted  in  the 


314  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

Panathenaic  parade  :  Hipparchos,  Hippasos,  Hippias, 
Hippo-botos,  Horse-herd ;  Hippodamas,  Horse-tamer ; 
Hippothoos,  Horse-swift ;  to  which  add  Lysippos,  Phai- 
nippos,  Show-horse,  Xanthippos,  Archippos,  Menippos, 
Thrasippos,  Archippos,  Philippos. 

Law  and  Justice  are  honored  in  Euthydikos,  Straight- 
right  ;  Euthykritos,  Straight-judged  ;  Themistokles,  Jus- 
tice-famed ;  Dikaiarchos,  Righteous-ruler. 

A  posy  of  women's  names  may  here  be  culled :  Agno 
and  Hagna,  The  chaste  one  ;  Kallikome,  Fair-tressed  ; 
Kallisto,  Fairest ;  Kallaithyia,  Fair-gleaming  ;  Hedyline, 
Sweeting  ;  Melite  and  Melissa,  Honey  and  Honey-bee  ; 
Makaria,  Blessed  ;  Anako,  Highdame  ;  Phaidra,  Beaming. 
With  love  and  loveliness  these  names  are  bound  up  : 
Eranno,  Brasilia,  Erasmia  (Huldah)  ;  Erato  and  Charito, 
Grace  ;  Eratonassa,  Love-dame  ;  Chairylla,  Joy  ;  Rhode, 
Rose. 

Moralizing  these  are  :  Phainarete,  Show- virtue ;  Xen- 
arete,  Virtue  to  guests  ;  Demarete,  Virtue  to  people ; 
Sophia,  Wisdom  ;  Eunomia,  Good  laws ;  Pheidylla,  Fru- 
galine.  We  do  not  know  very  many  women's  names,  of 
course.  But  the  Olympians  whom  the  Greeks  had  made 
for  themselves  were  much  cited  and  resorted  to  in  Hellenic 
nomenclature. 

Timotheos,  Honor-god  ;  Theognes,  God-sprung  ;  Theo- 
doros,  Theodotos,  and  Theodosios,  God-gift  and  God-given ; 
Theophanes,  God-revealed ;  Thukydides,  Son  of  God- 
fame  ;  Theokles.  Follows  the  chorus  of  concrete  figures 
and  forces  :  of  Zeus  are  these  :  Diodoros  (Zeus-given), 
Diodotos,  Zenon,  Zenodotos,  Dickies  ;  of  his  spouse  :  Her- 
odoros,  Herodotos,  Heraios,  Herakleitos,  Heragoras  ;  of 
Apollo  and  Artemis  :  Apollonios,  Apollodoros,  Apollo- 
krates,  Apollothemis  :  Artemisios,  Artemidoros.  Of  Ath- 
ena :  Athenion,  Athenaios,  Athenodoros,  Athenagoras ;  the 
god  of  craft  and  expedients :  Hermaios,  Hermesianax 
(Lord  Hermes),  Mimnermos,  Hermesikrates,  Hermesistra- 
tos.  The  Syrian  and  Paphian  Force  :  Aphrodites,  —  name 
clearly  rare  because  too  contiguous  to  impurity. 

The  healing  deified  heros  of  Epidauros  :  Asklepiades, 


ROMAN  SPIRIT  AND  ROMAN  CHARACTER       315 

Asklepiodoros  ;  Sun  and  Moon  :  Heliodoros,  Heliokles, 
Heliokrates :  Meniphilos,  Menodoros,  Menophilos,  and 
others. 

But  now  the  Roman  names  :  Lepidus,  Bright,  neat ; 
Paullus,  Little ;  Magnus,  Longus  ;  Crassus,  Fat ;  Scaurus, 
With  projecting  ankle-bones  ;  of  light  complexion  are 
Albus,  Albinus,  Albinius,  Albidius,  and  Albucius  ;  Aulus, 
Little  grandfather  ;  Junius,  Of  youthful  vigor  ;  Balbus, 
Balbinus,  Balbutius,  Stammerer  ;  Cselius,  perhaps  Blue- 
eyed  ;  Csesius,  Bluish-grey  eyed  ;  Kaeso,  Csesonius,  Cae- 
sernius,  Csesennius  ;  Aquilus,  Aquilius,  Black-eyed,  tint 
like  that  of  Eagle's  pinions.  Similar  is  the  meaning  of 
Fuscus. 

Csecilius,  Csecina,  Blind  —  perhaps  of  one  who  after 
birth  gained  his  eyesight  very  slowly. 

Catus  (Sabine  for  acute,  keen,  clever),  Cato,  Catulus, 
Catullus,  Catilina.  Celer,  Swift  ;  Capito,  With  large 
skull  at  birth  ;  Labeo,  with  large  lips  ;  Cincinnatus, 
Curly-haired;  also  Crispus,  Crispinus.  Claudius,  Limp- 
ing, Clodius.  Curtius,  Shortly,  like  Paullus.  Blond  hair 
was  the  adornment  of  the  first  babe  called  Flavus  :  as  a 
flower  appeared  to  his  happy  mother  the  little  boy 
named  Florus.  Flaccus  is  Limp  —  whether  of  hair  or 
ear.  Galba  is  Light  yellow  —  perhaps  our  straw-blond  : 
Glabrio  was  named  the  Rough-skinned  child  :  Julius  is 
associated  by  etymologists  with  Junius  and  Juno  :  the 
pride  of  Trojan  ancestry  had  other  explanation. 

Licinus  and  Licinius  (bent  upward)  perhaps  meant  a 
little  snub-nosed  ;  cf.  the  Simon  and  Simylos  of  Greeks. 
Even  more  downright  homely  and  realistic  is  Mucius, 
Slimy  ;  Lentulus,  Slowish,  needs  no  explanation.  Nasica 
and  Naso  are  concerned  with  the  nose  ;  while  Marcus, 
Male-child,  became  one  of  the  commonest  forenames  of  the 
Roman  people  :  its  variants  and  congeners  are  Marcius, 
Marcellus,  Marcellinus. 

Rutilus,  Rutilius,  Rufus,  Rufinus,  have  to  do  with  red 
hair  :  Psetus  is  he  of  the  sweetly-glancing  eye,  the  "  cun- 
ning "  babe  of  our  Philistine.  Lucius  clearly  a  matter  of 
good  omen  —  and  befalling  one-half  of  little  boys  —  they 


316  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

called  originally  one  born  in  daylight,  a  good  omen, 
obviously,  while  Manius  (Manlius,  Manilius)  is  the  child 
born  early  in  the  morn.  Varus,  Varius,  have  to  do  with 
feet,  step,  or  gait,  abnormality  there. 


From  pursuits,  industry,  husbandry,  may  be  these: 
Fabius,  a  farmer  cultivating  beans  :  probably  excelling 
among  his  neighbors  therein.  Porcius,  as  in  Iowa,  Swine- 
raiser.  Cassius,  perhaps  some  ancestral  peasant  good  in 
snaring  stag  or  doe  in  winter-time.  The  forefather  of  all 
Csepios  raised  that  prolific  though  somewhat  too  urgent 
vegetable,  the  onion  ;  perhaps,  too,  it  meant  some  infant 
whose  head  was  onion-shaped.  Cicero  may  refer  to  a 
certain  pea  :  or  was  it  a  child  with  somewhat  pod-like 
protuberance  of  nostrils  ?  Cicereius  certainly  means  the 
husbandman  and  farmer  distinguished  for  his  peas. 

A  few  names  seem  to  point  to  ritual  and  worship : 

Ancus,  Bent,  bowing,  servant  of  gods,  priest ;  Antistius, 
Priest ;  Aurelii  (Auselii :  a  Sabine  family),  Servants  of 
golden  sun,  priests  of  sun?  Camillus,  Acoylite,  little 
priest ;  Asinius  raised  donkeys,  Caninius,  dogs. 

Censorinus,  Flaminius,  Flamininus,  refer  to  honors  of 
office,  and  are  clearly  later  than  the  others. 

In  a  word :  was  there  ever  a  tribe,  race,  or  clan  so  en- 
tirely devoted  to  the  actual,  real,  present,  and  concrete 
as  these  Romans  were,  by  the  incisive  and  overwhelming 
testimony  of  their  nomenclature  ?  Need  I  enlarge  or  ex- 
pand any  further  this  cloud  of  witnesses  ?  Was  not  here, 
in  the  very  cradle  and  mother's  and  father's  direction  of 
mind  and  concern,  —  was  not  here  foreshadowed  and  de- 
termined a  race  supremely  indifferent  to  mere  glamour  or 
fancy  —  but  not  less  indifferent  to  the  broader  and  higher 
concerns  and  aspirations  of  our  common  humanity  ? 


Whatever  was  strong  or  made  for  strength  :  the  useful 
and  that  which  definitely  and  certainly  led  to  a  useful 
end,  this  people  cherished,  maintained,  and  improved. 


ROMAN  SPIRIT  AND  ROMAN  CHARACTER       317 

To  understand  how  on  the  great  Tuscan  stream  a  new 
commonwealth  was  planned  and  builded  is,  honestly 
speaking,  beyond  the  ken  and  vision  of  our  present 
powers  or  beyond  the  broken  fragments  of  actual  tradi- 
tion. The  last  and  the  strongest  of  Latin  communities, 
first  and  last  to  place  itself  by  Tiber,  only  artery  of 
greater  commerce,  stepping  far  beyond  the  narrow  op- 
portunities of  barter,  it  strove,  first,  for  the  hegemony 
over  Latium,  then  it  successfully  disputed  the  control  of 
the  peninsula  with  the  stout  Samnites,  and  last,  with  ever 
increasing  deliberateness,  this  wonderful  state  established 
its  sceptre  over  the  Mediterranean  world. 

More  conspicuous  and  dazzling  are  the  data  of  battle- 
fields, and  great  crises  are  often  marked  thereby  :  parting 
of  the  ways.  But  more  elusive  is  for  our  remoteness  the 
comprehension  of  the  warp  and  woof  out  of  which  is  made 
the  fabric  of  family,  of  that  order  and  orderliness  in  home 
and  state  which  could  endure  such  bufferings  of  outward 
vicissitudes  and  survive  such  domestic  trials. 

Was  the  sketch  of  Polybios  too  favorable  ?  The  Swiss 
have  not  a  great  state,  but  they  have  produced  eminent 
statesmen  and  publicists  :  Holland  has  brought  forth  not 
only  Oranges  and  Ruyters,  but  a  Hugo  Grotius  as  well. 
So  the  little  Achaian  league,  last  efflorescence  of  Hellenic 
political  life,  could  boast  a  Philopoimen,  Aratos,  Polybios. 
What  wide  training,  noble  traditions,  the  richest  culture, 
devotion  to  Stoic  creed,  an  outlook  on  a  contemporary  or 
slightly  preceding  history  full  of  momentous  movement  — 
what  all  these  could  do  for  a  gifted  and  serious  mind  they 
had  done  for  Polybios.  To  these  advantages  was  added 
a  profound  veracity  :  "  As  in  the  case  of  a  living  being, 
when  the  organs  of  sight  are  removed,  the  whole  organ- 
ism becomes  useless,  so,  when  truth  is  taken  away  from 
historiography,  the  remainder  of  it  becomes  a  useless  dis- 
course "  (1,  14).  It  is  not  within  the  limits  of  this  work 
to  transcribe  from  the  Achaian  statesman's  sixth  book 
with  what  balance  and  harmony  monarchy,  aristocracy, 
and  democracy  were  blended  and  their  several  forms  of 
efficiency  were  incarnate,  so  to  speak,  in  the  Roman  polity. 


318  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

Righteousness  writ  large  :  was  really  this  the  essence  of 
that  constitution  ?  The  Romans,  however,  advanced  their 
government  not  from  philosophical  foundations,  nor  from 
sociological  abstractions.  Experience,  actual  tests,  elimi- 
nation of  the  inefficient :  these  things  are  found  with  the 
Romans,  no  less  than  a  reverence,  an  awe  of  ancestral 
bonds,  and  the  authority  of  tradition  :  curious  felicity  for 
a  durable  polity  and  commonwealth.  "The  Romans 
(says  Polyb.,  VI,  11)  have  made  the  same  aim  in  the  set- 
tlement of  their  government  (as  Lycurgus),  but  not 
through  theoretical  reasoning,  but  choosing  the  better  in 
each  case  from  the  understanding  presented  in  momentous 
political  experiences,  —  thus  they  arrived  at  the  same  end 
and  aim  as  Lycurgus,  —  the  fairest  structure  of  a  polity 
found  in  our  time." 

How  colleague  checks  or  controls  colleague,  how  the 
initiative  of  consuls  is  checked  by  that  august  executive 
committee  for  current  affairs,  the  Senate:  how  the  rights 
of  the  poor  are  intrusted  to  a  specific  body  of  magistrates: 
how  the  census  is  a  powerful  stimulus  to  every  Roman  to 
improve  his  possessions :  how,  with  all  the  venerable  privilege 
of  Senatorial  class,  there  is  no  bar  to  talent  and  frugality: 
how  the  Censors  again  and  again  struck  with  the  powerful 
thunderbolt  of  their  nota.  Senators  whose  lives  bore  on 
their  surfaces  scandal  or  vice:  how  even  the  lowest  rung 
in  the  ladder  of  honors  —  there  was  no  other  reward,  long, 
in  public  service  —  the  military  tribuneship,  was  be- 
stowed upon  merit  alone :  all  these  things  are  permanent 
objects  of  the  concern  of  historians  and  moralists,  —  and 
of  classicists  even. 

Now,  in  any  effort  to  grasp  the  character  and  spirit  of 
this  commonwealth,  it  soon  becomes  manifest  that  the  most 
characteristic  trend  and  tendency  deals  with  authority 
and  with  property..  Further,  that  the  unparalleled  career 
of  conquest  of  the  Roman  commonwealth  must  not  be 
viewed  as  a  world-mission  of  order  and  statutes  imposed 
on  quarrelling  barbarians  by  the  military  benefactors  who 
came  from  the  Tiber  —  but  that  it  was  exploitation  on  a 
gigantic  scale. 


ROMAN  SPIRIT  AND  ROMAN  CHARACTER       319 

And,  first,  as  to  property.  Much  of  the  morality  of  the 
Romans,  very  many  of  their  soundest  as  well  of  her  most 
peculiar,  nay  oddest,  traits,  were  certainly  bound  up  with 
her  conception  of  property.  Sparta  claimed  children, 
specifically  sons,  for  the  state.  In  Rome  they  are  in  a 
unique  sense  the  property  of  the  father.  In  him  ancestry, 
power,  authority,  law,  everything,  is  blended.  I  know  of 
no  ancient  or  modern  civilization  that  has  coined  so  many 
terms  of  life  and  rights  from  that  word:  Pater,  Patronus, 
Patrocinium,  Patricius,  Patrimonium,  Pater  familias,  Pa- 
tronatus,  Patrocinari.  We  must,  of  course,  not  forget  that 
the  Romans  conceived  patria  potestas  as  the  greatest  social 
blessing  and  as  the  very  corner  stone  of  civil  order,  and  so 
ultimately  also  of  the  fabric  of  the  state. 

A  constitution  of  Constantino  the  Great  of  date  323 
(Codex  C,  8,  46,  10)  specifically  states  that  once  upon  a 
time  (olim)  the  power  over  life  and  death  was  permitted 
to  fathers.  And  Gaius  (famous  jurist  of  the  Law  School 
of  Berytos,  fl.  ab.  160  A.D.)  says  (1,  55):  "Likewise  (i.e. 
just  as  in  the  case  of  slaves)  in  our  power  are  our  children 
whom  we  have  begotten  in  legal  wedlock.  This  principle 
of  law  is  peculiar  to  Roman  citizens:  for  as  a  general  thing 
there  are  no  human  beings  who  have  such  power  over 
their  sons  as  we  have." 

Even  when  the  son  has  grown  to  vote,  to  serve  his 
years  in  the  military  establishment,  nay  even  after  he  has, 
with  the  consent  of  his  father,  married  and  begotten 
children  of  his  own,  this  stern  bond  of  dependency,  author- 
ity, and  civil  obligation  remained  unbroken. 

And  this  was  a  ius  moribus  receptum,  a  matter  of 
ancestral  tradition.  As  a  rule,  the  oldest  living  ascendant 
maintains  unimpared  civil  control  over  his  living  descend- 
ants excepting  girls  (who  through  marriage  have  passed 
into  other  power)  or  such  male  descendants  who  have  been 
emancipated  or  given  to  another  father  by  adoption.  The 
whole  trend  of  their  civilization  was,  to  settle  and  deter- 
mine the  rights  of  property.  The  precision  and  good 
sense  with  which  wills,  legacies,  trusts,  guardianship,  and 
pupillage,  the  rights  of  posthumous  children,  degrees  of 


320  TESTIMOXIUM  ANIM.E 

kinship  inhibiting  marriage,  adoption,  the  savings  of  sons 
and  slaves,  and  every  relation  of  civil  life,  were  settled  and 
determined,  has  challenged  the  admiration  of  mankind. 
I  have  space  here  for  but  a  few  matters  of  characteristic 
detail.  You  may  lend  money  to  a  ward  who  is  under  a 
guardian:  the  ward  (Justinian,  "Instit.,"  1,  21)  needs  not 
the  authority  of  his  tutor  to  accomplish  an  act  beneficial  to 
himself:  he  can  stipulate  effectively  to  receive  something: 
but  he  cannot  legally  impair  his  prospects  of  property  by 
acts  of  buying,  selling,  hiring,  letting,  brokerage  or  de- 
posit. Nor  can  the  pupillu*  enter  upon  an  inheritance 
without  authority  of  tutor:  for  the  lad  cannot  know 
whether  the  encumbrances  of  the  estate  are  not  more 
ruinous  than  is  the  amount  represented  by  the  free  assets. 

Guardianship,  i.e.  the  care  for  the  transmission  of  prop- 
erty, was  elaborated  by  the  Romans  into  a  public,  general, 
civic  obligation,  comparable  to  jury-service  in  America. 
The  government  appoints  a  tutor  in  default  of  testamen- 
tary provision,  and  this  guardian  must  give  ample  security, 
in  order  that  negligence  or  loss  may  be  prevented  (Justin., 
"Inst.,"  1,  24).  This,  however,  not  in  all  classes  of 
guardians.  Still  the  financial  liability  of  every  kind  of 
guardian  to  his  ward  was  well  established.  Even  the 
magistrates  who  had  neglected  this  matter  in  their  ap- 
pointments were  made  liable  to  the  impaired  estate,  and 
this  liability  descended  even  to  their  heirs. 

Infamia  was  the  penalty  visited  upon  the  faithless 
guardian  or  curator:  a  matter  determined  even  in  the 
Twelve  Tables  (of  451  sq.  B.C.).  An  action  against  a 
faithless  guardian  is  a  public  action  :  a  matter  of  public 
policy:  any  one  may  bring  it,  even  though  he  is  not 
personally  concerned :  even  a  mother,  nurse,  grandmother, 
or  sister  may  sue :  for  they  have  the  motive  of  pietas.  The 
Roman  Law  carefully  distinguished  between  negligence 
(culpa)  and  felonious  purpose  (dolus).  A  guardian  found 
guilty  of  the  latter  was  punished  with  civil  infamy.  And 
this  brings  us  to  the  matter  of  civil  and  commercial 
morality  as  maintained  among  the  Roman  people.  In  the 
first  place  we  make  record  of  the  fact  that  they  had 


ROMAN  SPIRIT  AND  ROMAN  CHARACTER       321 

Infamia  as  a  penalty:  awful  penalty,  where  there  was  no 
sweet  domicile,  no  tolerable  existence  beyond  the  confines 
of  the  native  commonwealth.  Delicate  was  the  sense  of  re- 
gard for  personal  honor  and  reputation:  the  mere  naming 
of  a  distinguished  man  in  a  public  way  was  generally 
attended  by  the  apologetic  phrase  quern  honoris  causa 
nomino.  The  reckless  impudence  of  Attic  democracy 
was  a  strange  thing  to  the  gravitas  of  the  Roman  character. 
The  poet  Nsevius  tried  to  be  a  Roman  Aristophanes, 
Eupolis,  or  Kratinos,  but  rued  for  it  in  prison. 

But  to  return  to  infamia,  infamis,  famosus.  A  curious 
observation  may  here  be  made  in  connection  with  this 
matter.  An  insolvent  master  may  (Justin.,  1,  6)  give  free- 
dom to  a  slave  by  will  so  as  to  constitute  him  his  heir  and 
place  him  under  legal  obligation  to  satisfy  the  creditors  of 
his  late  master.  This  slave  became  a  "heres  necessarius." 
If  the  slave  found  himself  unable  to  satisfy  the  creditors 
with  the  assets  of  his  new  estate  —  then  "his  assets  were 
sold:  he  was  bankrupt,  but  the  name  of  the  deceased  was 
spared.  Call  it  a  legal  fiction  if  you  will:  it  is  clear  that 
not  only  civil  opprobrium  was  associated  with  insolvency; 
that  a  good  commercial  name  was  most  precious  in  their 
estimation. 

There  was,  however,  a  specific  Praetorian  Edict  dealing 
with  Infamia.  I  find  that  the  character  and  design  of 
this  book  obliges  me  to  cite  it  in  full  ("  Digest,"  3,  2,  1). 

"  With  Infamy  is  branded  (notatur)  who  has  been  dis- 
gracefully dismissed  from  the  army  by  the  commander  or 
by  him  who  had  the  power  of  determining  about  that 
matter;  he  who  appears  upon  a  stage  as  a  professional 
actor  or  for  the  sake  of  giving  a  public  recitation  (for 
money,  I  take  it) ;  who  was  a  brothelkeeper ;  who  in  a 
public  trial  has  been  judged  to  have  done  something  for 
the  sake  of  calumny  or  betrayal  of  the  interests  of  an- 
other {prcevaricatio)  ;  who  has  been  condemned  on  his 
own  score  or  made  a  contract  involving  theft,  robbery 
attended  with  violence,  tort,  felonious  design  and  fraud ; 
who  has  been  found  guilty  as  business-partner,  on  his 
personal  responsibility  in  connection  with  Guardianship, 


322  TESTIMONIUM  ANIMvE 

Mandate,  Deposit,  there  being  no  judgment  to  the  con- 
trary ;  who  has  placed  a  woman  who  was  (civilly)  in  his 
power,  after  his  son-in-law  was  dead,  when  he  knew  that 
the  latter  was  dead,  within  that  period  of  time  during 
which  it  is  customary  to  mourn  for  a  husband  —  in  matri- 
mony, or  who  marries  such  a  woman  knowingly,  not  by 
the  order  of  him  in  whose  power  (civilly)  he  is ;  and  also 
the  person  who  has  permitted  the  marriage  of  the  woman 
described  above ;  or  who,  in  his  own  name,  not  by  the 
order  of  him  in  whose  power  he  is  or  in  the  name  of  that 
man  or  woman  whom  he  had  in  power,  has  established 
two  betrothals  or  two  espousals  at  one  and  the  same 
time."  It  is  in  these  very  forms  and  formalities  of  law 
and  procedure  in  which  the  character  and  spirit  of  the 
Roman  is  revealed,  whereas  his  flights  into  letters  and 
literature  are,  in  the  main,  exotic  and  inadequate  repro- 
ductions of  Greek  ;  hence  Roman  prose  is  by  far  the  more 
valuable  half  of  her  literary  remains. 

But  to  proceed :  a  great  and  praiseworthy  trait  of  the 
Roman  people  —  for  a  long  time — was  this,  that  their 
unwritten  law  was  so  strong  as  to  preserve  what  was 
sound,  and  to  inhibit  mere  innovation  for  the  sake  of  in- 
novation. This  was  due  in  great  measure  to  the  fact 
that  the  plebs  for  a  long  time  was  led  by  the  conservative 
classes.  It  was  due,  furthermore,  to  the  fact,  that  prop- 
erty for  a  long  time  had  a  decisive  influence  in  Roman 
affairs  as  over  mere  or  sheer  numbers.  Rome  was  a  gov- 
ernment in  which  family,  descent,  race,  wide  experience 
and  the  tradition  thereof,  together  with  property  and  a 
clear  valuation  of  field  and  forest  as  over  against  the  re- 
sourcelessness  of  urban  masses,  are  well  expressed.  In 
the  Classes  of  the  Servian  timocracy  wealth  determines  — 
we  may  say,  predetermines  —  magistrates,  administra- 
tion, policies,  and  politics.  Burdens,  service,  functions, 
and  privileges  were  balanced  with  considerable  fairness. 
Property  opened  the  way  into  the  equestrian  class  whose 
ablest  men  were  a  veritable  nursery  of  the  Senate.  The 
Census  was  indeed  a  peculiar  and  incisive  act  in  which 
every  citizen  is  recorded;  separately  minors  and  property- 


ROMAN  SPIRIT  AND  ROMAN  CHARACTER       323 

holding  women.  The  man  who  escaped  or  defrauded  the 
census  was  punished  with  great  severity.  In  the  older 
time  the  guilty  one  was  whipped,  and,  after  his  property 
had  been  confiscated,  was  sold  into  slavery.  After  168  B.C., 
when  direct  taxation  substantially  ceased,  all  these  things 
were  greatly  mitigated. 

The  census  involved  wife  and  children  also,  with  names 
and  ages.  "  Hast  thou  a  wife  ?  "  was  the  prescribed  ques- 
tion. And  then  followed  this  one :  "  For  the  sake  of 
raising  a  family  ?  "  (liberorum  qurcerndorum  cause,  Gellius, 
4,  20).  Thus  we  may  say  the  commonwealth,  as  in  a 
mirror,  surveyed  itself  in  short  periods. 

History  has  fairly  associated  severity  and  sternness 
with  this  characteristic  institution  of  the  Roman  people : 
the  life  and  conduct  of  each  one,  bound  up  with  the  mo- 
rality of  family  life  and  obedience  to  the  commonwealth,  is 
curiously  connected  with  census  and  censorship. 

This  brings  us  to  another  pertinent  matter  in  this  rapid 
survey  :  the  economic  aspect  of  civic  virtue.  We  can  but 
glance  at  the  sumptuary  Laws  of  Rome,  and  kindred  acts 
of  the  government.  In  the  year  275  B.C.  the  censor 
Fabricus  expelled  from  the  Senate  the  ex-consul  P.  Cor- 
nelius Rufinus  because  the  latter  owned  ten  pounds  of 
silver-plate.  The  Lex  Metella  of  220  B.C.  dealt  with 
fullers:  probably  limiting  dyes  and  incidental  luxury 
(cf.  Plin.,  "N.  H.,"  35,  197).  During  the  heat  and 
stress  of  the  Hannibalian  war,  in  215  B.C.,  but  one  year 
after  Cannee,  was  given  the  Lex  Oppia:  that  no  woman 
should  possess  more  than  half  an  ounce  of  gold :  that  she 
should  not  dress  in  a  many-colored  garment :  that  she 
should  not  ride  in  a  carriage  and  pair  within  a  mile  of 
Rome  or  smaller  towns,  unless  for  the  sake  of  public  re- 
ligious rites  (Liv.,  24,  1).  A  few  years  before,  in  218, 
was  enacted  the  Lex  Claudia  (Liv.,  21,  63),  viz.  that  no 
Senator  or  son  of  Senator  should  possess  a  seagoing  vessel 
holding  more  than  three  hundred  amphorce.  This,  says 
Livy,  was  considered  sufficient  for  conveying  produce 
from  the  open  country :  all  money-making  was  considered 
unbecoming  to  Senators, 


324  TESTIMONIUM  ANIJkLE 

The  common  people,  we  are  told,  were  enthusiastic  for 
this  law,  while  the  affected  aristocracy  was  disgruntled. 

The  Lex  Cincia  (de  donis  et  muneribus)  of  the  year  204 
B.C.  provided  that  no  one  should  receive  gift  or  fee  for 
pleading  a  case.  As  in  England  until  now  political  rep- 
resentation has  been  without  compensation,  so  in  Rome 
for  a  long  time  the  advocate's  and  pleader's  avocation  was 
carried  on  for  such  direct  rewards  as  affection  and  politi- 
cal promotion  could  hold  out  —  essentially  an  aristocratic 
profession,  as  were  all  things  concerning  law  and  legisla- 
tion in  the  better  times.  So  Cato  and  Cicero  arose  and 
became  mighty  in  their  generation. 

Conduct  of  life  and  the  proper  use  of  time  —  these 
things  again  were  inextricably  bound  together.  Elegant 
leisure,  pursuit  of  taste,  patronage  of  art  and  letters,  — 
all  these  things  came  late  and  became  conspicuous  features 
of  Roman  aristocracy  only  when  these  nobles  had  largely 
lost  their  essential  qualities.  Iron  rusts  not  but  when 
unused  ;  the  intrinsic  soundness  and  tough  fibre  of  Roman 
character  craved  action  and  labor:  the  practice  of  many 
generations  made  little  discrimination  between  sloth  and 
the  life  of  contemplation  and  study  —  the  consummation 
of  Greek  civilization  and  the  goal  for  the  trend  of  her 
choicest  souls. 

Endless  are  the  points  of  contact  between  the  lives  of 
the  Elder  Cato  and  Benjamin  Franklin :  knowedge  indeed, 
but  always  with  the  proviso  that  it  be  useful  knowledge : 
whereby  they  meant  addition  to  one's  assets.  Unless 
your  Senator  utterly  departed  to  one  of  his  many  villas 
and  the  cult  of  Ceres  and  Pomona,  life  at  home  was  stren- 
uous. To  begin  a  banquet  de  die  —  i.e.  with  some  clip- 
ping from  the  hours  devoted  to  work  or  business  —  was 
almost  a  crime  to  the  sense  of  the  olden  time.  "  At 
Rome  "  (says  Horace,  "  Epistles,"  2,  1,  103)  "  it  was  long 
a  mode  of  living  beloved  and  established  by  time,  early 
at  morn,  the  mansion  unlocked,  to  be  up,  to  give  legal 
decisions  to  the  client,  to  lay  out  cautious  investments  on 
sound  security,  to  listen  to  your  elders,  to  tell  the  younger 
one  through  what  means  assets  might  grow,  and  expensive 
sexual  appetite  might  be  curbed." 


ROMAN  SPIRIT  AND  ROMAN  CHARACTER       325 

Thus  Frugi  became  an  honorable  proper  noun,  and  non- 
productive pursuits  were  abhorrent  to  a  commonwealth 
where  craving  and  getting,  where  husbandry,  principal  and 
interest  were  universal  concerns,  and  where  Nepos  (grand- 
son) connoted  also  a  squanderer  and  a  spendthrift.  Even 
Sulla,  a  man  largely  emancipated  from  the  older  and  better 
Rome,  in  his  day  attempted  to  limit  the  luxury  of  banquets 
and  check  the  aspirations  of  Roman  gourmands. 

There  was  no  stone  theatre  at  Rome  before  Pompey's 
time.  Sternness  is  contiguous  to  cruelty.  I  have  time 
but  for  a  few  words  concerning  military  penalties. 

Neglect  in  reviewing  pickets  or  in  keeping  post  near 
camp  was  punished  immediately  (Polyb.,  VI,  37)  by 
beating  with  cudgels  and  throwing  stones,  until  the 
culprit  dropped  and  expired  in  camp,  among  his  com- 
rades. But  if  he  actually  survived  this  and  escaped 
beyond  the  stockade,  even  then  there  was  no  hope  or  sal- 
vation. They  had  lost  their  native  commonwealth  and 
must  wander  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 

The  same  terrible  penalty  was  dealt  out  to  him  who 
committed  a  theft  in  camp :  also  to  him  who  bore  false 
witness  there;  or  if  any  one  be  detected  in  sexual  abuse 
of  a  boy.  All  these  features  were  both  of  splendid  dis- 
cipline and  reveal  in  a  measure  that  toughness  which 
subjected  the  Mediterranean  world. 

On  a  forlorn  post  (our  Greek  observer  says,  ib.,  37), 
even  if  many  times  their  own  number  assault  them,  they 
flee  not  nor  abandon  their  hopeless  position,  fearing  their 
own  penalty :  "  Some  might  in  the  melee  cast  away  shield 
or  sword  or  some  other  one  of  their  arms,  as  though  bereft 
of  reason,  and  fling  themselves  among  the  foe,  either 
hoping  to  recover  what  they  threw  away,  or,  if  subject  to 
the  vicissitudes  of  war,  hoping  to  escape  the  manifest  dis- 
grace and  the  insolence  awaiting  them  at  the  hands  of  their 
own  people." 

As  for  slaves,  the  very  etymology  of  servus  is  somewhat 
obscure.  Victory  makes  property,  and  preeminently  does 
it  give  title  to  the  person  of  the  vanquished.  So  classical 
antiquity  held.  This  was  conceived  as  under  the  Law  of 


326  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

Nations  (Jm  Gentium).  Property  obligations  could  even 
convert  the  free  debtor  into  what  was  in  effect  a  slave. 
Here  we  are  able  to  cite  from  the  very  essence  of  the 
Roman  spirit,  viz.  from  the  XII  Tables  (Tabula  3)  :  "After 
a  debt  has  been  confessed  and  trial  has  been  had  on  the 
issues,  a  period  of  thirty  days  shall  be  granted  by  law. 
Thereafter  the  creditor  shall  have  the  right  to  make  arrest 
of  the  person  of  his  debtor.  He  shall  bring  him  into 
court.  If  the  debtor  do  not  execute  the  judgment  (i.e. 
pay),  or  some  one  for  him  give  satisfaction  in  court,  the 
creditor  shall  bind  the  debtor  with  sinews  (thongs)  or  with 
fetters  of  fifteen  pounds  or  more.  The  prisoner  may 
furnish  his  own  food.  Otherwise  the  creditor  shall  give 
him  a  pound  of  wheat  each  day,  or  more."  As  Gellius, 
(20,  1,  46)  explains  the  further  procedure,  a  period  of 
imprisonment  followed,  which  lasted  sixty  days.  During 
this  time  for  three  consecutive  market  days  (Nundinte, 
8-16,  24)  the  debtor  was  produced  before  the  prsetor 
and  the  amount  of  the  judgment  was  proclaimed.  There- 
after their  life  was  forfeited  or  they  were  sold  across  the 
Tiber  into  slavery.  That  is  to  say  among  the  Etruscans, 
who  spoke  not  Latin  and  had  a  reputation  for  cruelty. 
Such  and  similar  were  the  laws  of  debt  which  caused  the 
famous  "  Secession  "  of  the  plebs  in  494.  But  the  severe 
law  just  quoted  was  nearly  half  a  century  later. 

To  speak  briefly  :  if  property  triumphed  over  humanity 
where  the  parties  were  members  of  the  same  commonwealth, 
the  only  sphere  of  life  and  living  where  some  form  of 
humanity  might  be  expected,  what  then  shall  we  expect 
of  the  Roman  conception  of  slavery?  What  humanity, 
pity  or  regard?  It  will  not  do  to  dispose  of  this  matter 
as  Joachim  Marquardt  does,  with  a  sweeping  and  general 
pointing  to  the  "  repulsive  phase  of  Roman  slavery  which 
is  the  same  in  all  slave  states."  In  the  first  place  it  was 
not  the  same.  As  far  I  know  Greece  had  no  slave-wars. 

Plautus  knew  the  actual  public  of  his  Rome  (215-183 
B.C.  or  so)  probably  better  than  Ennius  or  even  Cato. 
How  rods  of  tough  elm,  wielded  in  turn  by  a  large  number 
of  those  intrusted  with  the  flogging,  worn  out  on  the  back 


ROMAN  SPIRIT  AND  ROMAN  CHARACTER       327 

of  the  slave  who  was  suspended  from  a  frame  with  bared 
back  while  undergoing  this  torture  —  I  say,  repartee 
dealing  with  such  scenes  was  clearly  an  unfailing  means 
to  amuse  the  plebs  of  Rome  (v.  Plautus,  "  Asinaria,"  565 
«<?<?.).  The  flagrum  or  flagellum  was  a  kind  of  knout  of 
knotted  cords  or  wire,  with  metal  points  or  "scorpions." 
Hot  metal  plates  were  used.  Mill  and  quarry  were  ex- 
treme resorts.  The  fugitivus  slave,  a  common  type  of 
life,  was  branded,  or  an  iron  ring  was  firmly  clamped  about 
his  throat ;  often  he  furnished  a  few  minutes'  sport  in  the 
arena,  to  contend  with  ferocious  beasts. 

Then  there  was  the  cross  and  the  patibulum.  The 
latter  —  I  use  the  words  of  Marquardt  ("  Prlvatleben 
der  Romer"  1886,  p.  186}  —  was  a  "  block  of  wood  for  the 
throat,  consisting  of  two  parts :  it  was  opened,  fastened 
about  the  throat  of  the  culprit  and  in  this  form  appeared 
as  a  beam  to  which  the  two  hands  of  the  condemned  man 
could  be  tied  or  nailed.  By  crux  they  meant  a  pale  (or 
wooden  upright)  only,  which  was  already  erected  at  the 
place  of  execution  (palus  or  stipes)  ;  attached  to  this,  too, 
a  person  could  be  flogged  and  crucified,  but  the  common 
form  of  crucifixion  was  that  one  in  which  the  culprit, 
suspended  in  the  patibulum,  was  drawn  up  this  pale,  so 
that  the  patibulum,  when  firmly  fastened,  formed  the  cross- 
piece  of  the  cross.  A  difference  in  the  penalty  was  in 
this  alone,  that  the  delinquent  sometimes  was  simply  sus- 
pended in  the  patibulum ;  as  a  rule,  however,  he  was  nailed 
with  the  hands  to  the  patibulum,  with  the  feet  to  the 
stipes."  Cruciare  and  cruciatus  are  the  ordinary  terms  of 
the  Latin  language  to  designate  torture  and  torment. 

In  the  year  132  B.C.  the  first  of  the  greater  slave- wars 
of  Rome  was  concluded;  Tauromenion  (Taormina)  in 
Sicily  was  taken  by  the  consul  Rupilius  —  by  betrayal, 
Diodoros  says  —  likewise  Henna,  their  stoutest  refuge, 
where  more  than  twenty  thousand  slaves  (Orosius)  were 
put  to  death. 

Again,  in  the  same  province,  then  chief  granary  for  the 
needs  of  Rome,  a  slave-war  raged  for  nearly  four  years, 
down  to  99  B.C. 


328  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

In  73  B.C.  began  the  war  of  gladiators,  which  has  im- 
mortalized the  name  of  Spartacus  —  the  gladiators  were 
slaves  too,  and  were  trained  by  contracting  owners  to 
furnish  forth  amusement :  so  many  pairs  at  so  much  the 
pair.  The  Roman  populace  scanned  the  bills  for  famous 
names  as  the  names  of  operatic  and  histrionic  people  are 
scanned  on  programmes  by  the  modern  devotees  of  art. 

There  are  modern  aberrations,  too,  however,  such  as 
the  pernicious  and  shallow  glorification  of  spectacular 
athleticism  in  a  mysterious  connection  with  institutions  of 
learning.  We  must  deal  gently  with  the  Romans. 

Seventy-four  gladiators  escaped  from  a  "  school  " 
(Indus)  of  their  profession,  training  table  and  all,  at 
Capua.  That  was  the  spark  in  the  hay-rick.  Stout 
men,  once  free,  from  Gaul  and  Thrace,  were  the  leaders, 
Vesuvius'  then  smiling  slopes  their  base  of  operations. 
Two  consular  armies  were  discomfited  by  them.  One  pro- 
consul fell  in  battle.  Who  will  explicitly  point  out  all 
the  tremendous  volume  of  meaning  which  lies  in  the 
simple  fact  that  in  a  short  time  Spartacus  commanded 
seventy  thousand  men  !  How  precarious  was  life  and  sub- 
sistence with  such  an  economic  basis  ! 

Finally  the  resources  and  plan  of  Crassus  were  suc- 
cessful. Sixty  thousand  slaves  fell  as  men,  but  six  thou- 
sand were  captured.  Six  thousand  crosses  from  Capua 
northward  soon  after  bore  carrion  for  vultures. 

Leaving  this  theme  we  must  say  a  word  as  to  the  freed- 
man,  the  reverse  of  the  shield.  Here  the  spirit  of  Rome 
was,  in  a  measure,  generous  and  liberal.  The  former  mas- 
ter was  called  patronus,  a  variant  indeed  of  father.  There 
were  many  forms  of  manumission  (Justin., "  Inst.,"  1, 12). 
Wills  rarely  neglected  such  generous  acts :  acts  declared 
invalid  only  when  they  involved  an  impairment  of  the 
rights  of  creditors.  Tombs  often  were  established  to  hold 
the  ashes  of  the  owner's  freedmen  and  freedwomen  as  well 
as  his  own  kin. 

The  freedman  took  the  name  of  his  patron,  and  if  his 
record  had  been  without  a  serious  flaw,  was  also  made  a 
Roman  citizen.  His  former  master  held  certain  testamen- 


ROMAN  SPIRIT  AND  ROMAN  CHARACTER       329 

tary  rights  to  a  portion  of  the  freedman's  estate.  Such 
rights  could  be  specifically  willed  by  the  patron. 

Thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  of  Roman  citizens 
thus  derived  their  descent  from  slaves,  and  in  time  stat- 
utes were  enacted  (e.g.  LexFufia  Caninia,  Justin.,  "  Inst.," 
1,  7)  limiting  manumission  by  will. 

Even  in  129  B.C.,  when  the  internal  troubles  of  Rome 
were  assuming  a  critical  character,  the  average  mob  of 
the  Forum  was  not  of  Latin,  nay  not  even  of  Italian 
ancestry ;  it  was  then  when  Scipio  jEmilianus,  first 
Roman  of  his  time  by  every  token  of  eminence,  uttered 
the  proud  rejoinder  to  the  seething  and  enraged  populace 
("  Velleius,"  2,  4) :  "  How  can  I  be  alarmed  by  your  shout- 
ing, to  whom  Italy  is  merely  a  stepmother !  " 

In  the  early  years  of  Nero  (Tacit.,  "Annals,"  13,  26) 
there  was  a  strong  movement  to  make  more  severe  the 
penalties  which  a  patronus  might  inflict  upon  a  faithless 
or  ungrateful  libertus.  The  injured  patronus  could,  in- 
deed, relegate  the  offending  freedman  a  hundred  miles 
away  from  Rome :  but  the  coast  of  Campania  was  a  para- 
dise :  was  there  not  a  weapon  that  could  not  be  treated 
with  disdain?  It  was  proposed  to  enact  a  Senatus  Con- 
sultum  to  punish  a  transgressing  freedman  with  renewal 
of  slavery.  But  upon  closer  inquiry  they  were  astounded 
to  find  that  the  majority  of  the  equestrian  class,  nay  even 
of  the  august  Senate,  had  such  an  humble  pedigree.  (Con- 
sider also  Lucan's  lamentations,  7, 404  sqq.) 

The  deference  to  family,  to  authority,  is  written  on 
every  page  of  Roman  history:  the  drift  of  that  history 
exhibits  the  fact  that  the  battles  of  Rome  were  won,  her 
administrations  determined,  her  children  begotten  and 
her  blood  shed,  for  the  interests  of  a  small  number  of 
great  families.  The  very  history  of  the  Republic  is  a 
texture  of  such  proud  records,  a  history  not  a  little  viti- 
ated by  the  pomp  and  pride  of  the  great  houses. 

Every  client  and  freedman  shared  in  the  satisfaction 
whenever  a  new  censura  consulatus  or  triumph  was  added  to 
the  records  of  the  particular  gens,  and  the  interest  which 
they  could  make  in  elections  and  electioneering  was 


330  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

tremendous.  The  Patrician  Gens  Claudia  in  the  course  of 
time  could  record  twenty-eight  consulships,  five  dictator- 
ships, seven  censorships,  seven  triumphs,  two  ovations. 

The  Domitii  boasted  of  seven  consulates,  two  triumphs, 
and  two  dictatorships :  and  similar  were  the  records  of  the 
Sulpicii,  Cornelii,  Aurelii,  Calpurnii,  Caecilii,  Metelli, 
JEmilii,  Fabii,  Fulvii,  Furii,  Licinii,  Manlii,  Marcii, 
Papirii,  Postumii,  Quinctii,  Sempronii,  Servilii,  Sulpicii, 
Valerii.  Pedigrees,  Ancestral  Busts,  Inscriptions :  these 
were  the  dearest  possession  of  them  all.  That  they  main- 
tained for  an  uncommon  span  of  history  strong  fibre 
of  sound  qualities  cannot  be  denied;  that  they,  on  the 
other  hand,  conducted  administration  and  the  enlargement 
of  the  empire  chiefly  for  the  advancement  of  their  own 
class  and  privileges  alone,  is  an  incontestable  fact  of 
ancient  annals. 

This  pride  of  race  in  which  so  great  a  part  of  Roman 
character  stands  revealed,  was  particularly  exhibited  at 
the  end  of  their  careers,  at  the  funeral.  The  keen  eye 
of  Polybius  has  seized  upon  this  feature  with  his  wonted 
felicity  of  valuation  (Polyb.,  6,  53).  Everything,  says 
the  Sage  of  Megalopolis,  the  Roman  aristocrat  endured 
to  reap  the  fame  associated  with  excellence.  And  this 
the  exequies  must  show  to  his  fellow-citizens.  The  pro- 
cession in  stately  and  solemn  parade  moved  to  the  rostra. 
There  is  the  embalmed  corpse  presented  to  the  gaze  of  the 
myriads,  corpse  sometimes  reclining,  generally  placed 
upright.  A  son  or  other  kinsman  mounts  the  rostra.  He 
then  delivers  the  laudatio  funebris,  beginning  with  the 
dimmest  antiquity  of  the  family,  going  on  to  a  recital  of 
the  eminent  qualities  and  achievements  of  the  deceased. 
Thus  the  plebs  became  in  a  way  a  body  of  cousins,  and 
warm  admirers  of  its  own  grandees.  The  portrait  bust  is 
promptly  added  to  the  collection  of  that  gens.  These 
portraits  were  not  idealized,  but  they  rigidly  reproduced 
every  peculiarity  of  physiognomy.  The  family  "  Im- 
agines" were  kept  in  little  sanctuary-like  screens  (veuSfovsi) 
and  carried  on  solemn  occasions  by  dumb  figures  whose 
stature  fairly  was  the  same  as  the  person  represented. 


ROMAN  SPIRIT  AND  ROMAN   CHARACTER       331 

These  dumb-figure  men  were  further  garbed  and  adorned 
in  the  character  or  station  of  the  deceased,  as  consul  or 
praetor :  these  with  the  purple-margined  toga ;  or  if  a 
censor,  purple:  but  if  a  triumphator,  then  with  gold-textiled 
garb.  Chariots  and  lictors  are  not  wanting,  everything 
recalling  the  precise  honors  of  the  past.  And  when  they 
arrive  at  the  rostra,  all  seat  themselves  on  ivory  chairs. 

Could  anything  more  kindle  ambition  in  the  breast  of 
youth?  The  very  history  and  greatness  of  Rome  seemed 
to  be  there  incarnate :  civic  immortality  indeed. 

The  praise  of  each  one  was  recalled  by  the  funeral 
speaker  and  there  they  were  themselves  with  all  the 
emblems  of  civic  eminence,  and  here,  if  anywhere,  we  be- 
hold the  consummate  flower  of  the  Roman  spirit,  their 
dearest  ideals  of  existence. 


Before  I  conclude  this  chapter,  I  must  turn  to  a  matter 
not  to  be  set  aside  or  treated  lightly  :  the  political  morality 
of  Roman  administration  and  Roman  conquest. 

Ludwig  Lange  has  particularly  elaborated  how  the 
parental  and  filial  principle  seems  to  be  deeply  marked  in 
many  of  their  institutions.  The  Senators  always  were, 
officially,  the  fathers  of  the  people.  On  the  other  hand, 
we  may  say  that  no  bill  of  rights  was  ever  granted  to  the 
common  people  and  though  the  evils  of  an  oligarchy  were 
palliated,  they  were  very  real. 

The  right  of  appeal  (provocatio)  enacted  and  reenacted, 
the  demand  for  statutes  drawn  in  writing  and  permitting 
the  common  people  to  know  the  extent  of  the  penalties 
that  could  be  imposed  upon  them  (451-49),  the  tardy 
granting  of  the  right  of  intermarriage,  the  throwing  open 
of  the  curulian  offices  to  the  plebeians,  the  admission  of 
tribunician  legislation  to  a  force  binding  on  all  alike 
(287  B.C.),  —  each  and  every  one  of  these  concessions  was 
wrested  from  the  privileged  class  only  by  great  persistence 
and  by  stubborn  determination.  Colonies  indeed  were 
placed  in  all  parts  of  Italy  among  the  political  dependents 
of  Rome,  generally  dubbed  "  allies "  by  a  transparent 


332  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

euphemism.  Rome  here  provided  at  the  cost  of  the  con- 
quered for  her  surplus  population  and  placed  a  large 
number  of  Roman  citadels  from  the  Po  down  to  the  Ionic 
Sea  and  the  blue  waters  of  Sicily.  But  many  colonists 
seem  to  have  been  content  with  remaining  at  Rome  and 
leasing  their  land  to  the  old  inhabitants. 

Betterment  for  some :  expropriation  for  the  others. 
Particularly  when  the  personal  ascendency  of  Marius,  and 
after  him  of  Sulla  and  Pompey  and  Caesar,  compelled 
them  by  the  political  necessity  of  self-preservation  to  re- 
ward the  veterans  who  had  made  them  —  then  indeed 
forms  of  law  were  shamefully  abused  by  military  colonies, 
so-called :  Apulia  and  Po  country,  and  particularly  Etruria, 
suffered  deep  distress  in  such  settlements. 

The  treatment  which  Rome  gave  its  Latin  "  allies  "  is 
significant :  these  men,  bone  and  blood  of  Rome's  strength 
and  defensive  resources,  in  340  B.C.  demanded  real  political 
equality  :  they  were  subdued  in  a  desperate  series  of  cam- 
paigns. Some  were  indeed  reconciled  to  their  lot  by  slight 
concessions:  Rome  was  ever  a  believer  in  the  fictions  of  res- 
onant formularies:  some  Latin  communities  were  given 
the  "  citizenship  without  the  suffrage."  In  order  that  the 
votes  of  the  numerous  folk  in  the  capital  who  had  no  glebe 
or  cattle  should  never  preponderate,  these  were  all  enrolled 
in  four  city  tribes:  four  out  of  thirty-five,  harmless  num- 
bers, but  distinctly  inferior  to  the  farming  folk  we  may 
admit  (304  B.C.).  All  men  of  higher  rank  were  enrolled 
in  the  thirty-one  rustic  tribes  so-called.  The  very  resi- 
dence in  Rome  was  once  forbidden  the  citizens  of  Latin 
allied  towns  in  177:  it  was  the  principle  of  exclusiveness 
contesting  with  that  of  ethnical  identity  and  political 
equity;  the  Senators  even  in  126  B.C.  (Lex  Junia  de 
Peregrinis)  found  no  way  of  keeping  these  kindred  out  of 
political  community  but  by  physical  expulsion. 

But  worse  than  this  stubborn  exclusiveness  was  the 
selfishness  with  which  the  aristocracy  acquired,  if  not  the 
title,  at  least  the  use  and  benefit  of  holdings  in  the  public 
land.  It  must  be  admitted  that  the  common  people  were 
too  poor  even  to  convey  their  family  to  —  and  to  begin 


ROMAN  SPIRIT  AND  ROMAN  CHARACTER       333 

husbandry  in  —  lands  often  very  far  from  the  seat  of  gov- 
ernment. What  of  it,  if  the  title  did  remain  in  the  state  ? 

It  was  hard  and  insufferable  that  the  very  legionaries  who 
had  carried  the  sovereignty  and  empire  of  Rome  from  the 
confines  of  Cilicia  to  the  tides  of  the  Atlantic,  should,  when 
they  finally  came  home,  find  hardly  anything  in  the  lap  of 
the  future  which  made  life  worth  living  at  all.  Dioscuri 
(Plutarch's  phrase)  —  these  rare  brothers,  Tiberius  and 
Gains  Sempronius  Gracchus,  who  called  Cornelia  mother 
and  the  brilliant  Scipio  the  elder,  victor  at  Zama,  their 
maternal  grandfather  —  are  the  two  brothers,  even  now 
political  figures  exceedingly  difficult  to  fix  in  fair  valua- 
tion, their  wreaths  of  honor  refusing  to  lie  quite  still  in 
the  herbaria  of  time.  At  the  forefront  of  the  best  culture 
of  the  peninsula  were  these  brothers,  moved,  I  believe,  by 
motives  of  rare  purity:  Gaius  the  younger,  more  radical  and 
the  politician  who  knew  the  exact  seam  in  the  masonry  of 
ancient  privilege  and  abuse  where  he  might  set  his  chisel 
and  swing  his  mallet.  Tiberius  the  gentler  and  the  ideal- 
ist: when  he  saw  once  (travelling  through  northern  Italy 
to  serve  in  Spain)  how  bare  was  Etruria  of  homesteads, 
how  rarely  but  a  solitary  shepherd  slave  tended  flocks  where 
farms  had  been,  he  shuddered  and  was  grieved. 

Both  brothers  fell  victims  to  privilege:  traitors  they 
were  called  to  their  own  class:  revolutionaries,  striving 
for  autocratic  power  —  men  who  would  subvert  order  and 
property:  so,  I  say,  were  they  branded  by  the  ones  : 
benefactors,  martyrs,  patriots  they  were  called  by  the 
others:  their  name  became  the  battle-cry  of  parties,  and 
Julius  Csesar  and  Augustus  were  their  later  heirs. 

Do  we  marvel  that  the  Wars  of  the  Oligarchy  or  of  the 
aspirants  for  supreme  powers  were  waged  by  mercenaries 
thenceforward  ? 

As  to  foreign  conquest  and  the  gathering  together  of 
the  provinces  that  fringed  the  Mediterranean,  it  was  a 
question,  at  first,  of  disputing  the  first  place  in  the 
western  world  with  Carthage. 

Even  Cicero,  enlightened  beyond   his  generation   and 


334  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

ever  seeking  for  logical  and  moral  substructure  of  action  — 
even  Cicero  uses  these  momentous  words:  "  There  is  no 
commonwealth  so  foolish  as  not  to  prefer  to  hold  sway 
unrighteously  rather  than  be  enslaved  justly  to  another  " 
("De  Bepub.,"  3,  28). 

Hammer  or  anvil:  this  indeed  was  but  too  often  the 
only  alternative  of  political  life  and  living.  The  Roman 
antiquarians  were  fond  of  expatiating  on  the  venerable 
institution  of  the  Fetialis :  the  herald  who  in  set  terms 
and  solemn  appeal  demanded  satisfaction  first  from  the 
offending  neighboring  community :  day  of  small  things 
and  border  feuds,  cattle  driven  off,  vineyards  destroyed: 
from  these  Origines  it  was  a  vast  stride  to  the  scene  which 
I  will  now  briefly  place  before  the  reader,  following  the 
story  preserved  in  Valerius  Maximus  (6,  4,  3).  The 
Romans  had  sent  Popilius  Lsenas  to  King  Antiochos 
Epiphanes,  requesting  that  this  monarch  should  abandon 
his  projected  invasion  (168  B.C.)  of  Egypt.  The  envoy 
of  the  Senate  handed  to  the  king  a  copy  of  the  Senatus 
Consultum  making  this  demand.  Antiochos  read  it  and 
remarked  that  he  would  hold  a  conference  with  his  friends. 
Popilius,  indignant  that  he  should  have  advanced  any 
delay,  marked  off  with  his  staff  the  ground  upon  which  he 
was  standing,  and  said:  "  Before  you  step  from  this  circle, 
give  me  a  reply  which  I  may  report  to  the  Senate."  The 
king  promptly  submitted. 

The  Initiative  of  the  Senate  was  often  very  fair-looking, 
but  the  lust  for  power  and  money  was  generally  soon  un- 
masked. 

Most  ignoble  were  the  diplomatic  tricks  by  which  Rome 
designed  to  hamstring  her  ancient  rival,  Carthage,  before 
dealing  her  the  deadly  thrust.  It  was  the  final  triumph 
of  old  Gate's  policy:  no  sentimental  or  humanitarian 
scruples  here:  Carthage  had  been  a  loyal  and  submissive 
subject  for  nearly  two  generations.  But  her  capitalistic 
strength,  ever  replenished  by  her  wonderful  genius  for, 
and  her  vast  experience  in,  mercantile  pursuits,  —  this  dis- 
turbed the  politicians  of  Rome  who  were  like  Cato. 

The  story  of  Numantia,  the  Annals  of  the  Numidiau 


ROMAN  SPIRIT  AND  ROMAN  CHARACTER       335 

war,  are  a  record  of  Roman  disgrace.  The  aristocracy 
had  discovered  that  the  Mediterranean  world  had  become 
their  quarry :  covetousness  was  ever  unsatiable  by  what  it 
fed  on:  where  power,  where  lust,  where  gold  were  as- 
sociated in  a  clover-leaf  of  human  felicity  —  why  should 
the  oligarchy  of  Rome  stop  short  ?  where  should  they  stop  ? 
what  could  make  them  stop? 

The  younger  Gracchus  returned  from  Sardinia,  where 
he  had  been  quaestor,  in  124  B.C.  Many  nuggets  of  pure 
gold  are  concealed  among  the  dry  leaves  of  the  fuzzy  and 
pedantic  Gellius:  here  is  one  (15,  12),  actual  utterance 
on  the  forum  by  Gaius  Gracchus:  "I  demeaned  myself  in 
the  province  in  such  a  manner  as  I  deemed  to  be  to  your 
interest,  not  as  I  held  it  to  be  advantageous  to  my  own 
striving  for  advancement.  No  kitchen  for  gratifying  my 
palate  was  near  me:  nor  were  there  standing  boys  of 
comely  features.  ...  So  I  bore  myself  in  the  province, 
that  no  one  could  truthfully  say  that  I  had  received  an 
As  or  more  than  an  As,  in  presents:  or  that  any  one  went 
to  any  expense  on  my  account.  Two  years  I  was  in  the 
province:  if  any  courtesan  entered  my  house,  or  if  any 
one's  slave-boy  was  tempted  on  my  account,  deem  me  the 
lowest  and  most  worthless  of  mankind.  \Y"hen  I  kept 
myself  so  chaste  from  their  slaves,  from  that  fact  you  will 
be  able  to  estimate  how  you  must  think  I  lived  in  the 
company  of  your  own  sons.  .  .  .  Therefore,  ye  Romans, 
when  I  set  out  for  Rome,  the  belts  which  I  carried  out  (to 
Sardinia)  full  of  silver,  these  I  brought  back  from  the 
province  empty.  Others  have  brought  back  jars  of  wine, 
which  they  took  out  full,  brought  them  home,  I  say,  filled 
with  silver." 

"  Investors  and  Promoters  "  —  these  are  terms  of  some- 
what wearisome  familiarity  when  I  am  writing  and  where 
I  am  writing.  Heart  of  the  world  some  might  call  Rome 
as  she  sat  on  her  seven  hills  —  all  arteries  took  her  blood, 
all  veins  brought  it  back  to  that  central  point:  or 
why  not  stomach  rather?  all  provinces  send  their  products 
and  profits.  Cinnabar  and  silver  from  Spain,  wheat, 
lentils,  papyrus  from  Alexandria,  byssus  from  India,  silk 


336  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

from  China,  the  gold  of  Ophir  and  costly  spices  from 
Arabia  Felix,  lions  and  elephants  from  Africa,  panthers 
from  Syria,  to  amuse,  feed,  dress,  entertain  the  sovereign 
Tiber-folk. 

Principal  and  Interest:  the  publicani  undertook  the 
taxes  of  vast  provinces  by  the  stroke  or  bond  of  a  single 
contract.  Soon  vast  portions  of  the  civilized  world 
labored  in  the  sweat  of  their  brow  to  pay  money  to  the 
Roman  bankers  and  publicans. 

Fervid  the  admiration  of  Greek  culture  which  in  the 
time  of  Marius's  beginning  ascendency  was  a  veritable 
badge  of  the  Roman  aristocracy  (Sallust,  "Jugurthine 
War"):  the  military  genius,  humble  peasants'  son  from 
Arpinum,  boasted  before  the  voters  that  he  —  the  people's 
own — could  not  talk  Greek,  as  the  plebs  could  not. 
Smyrna  and  Rhodes,  Lesbos  and  Ephesus:  these  became 
veritable  objects  of  pilgrimage  and  study. 

And  still  was  that  province  of  older  Pergamos  —  the 
Romans  called  it  Asia —  cruelly  ground  down  under 
the  Roman  tax-gatherers  and  bankers.  The  Greeks  in  the 
western  part  of  Asia  Minor  were  willing,  on  a  single  day, 
at  one  preconcerted  signal,  in  the  year  88  B.C.  to  put  to 
death  without  mercy  whatever  spoke  Latin  among  them, 
men  and  women,  children,  slaves,  all;  the  lowest  estimate 
put  the  victims  at  80,000  souls.  In  describing  these 
things,  Mommsen  speaks  much  of  "  Hellenism  "  —  an  aca- 
demic fiction  in  the  main:  the  Athenians  had  utterly 
abased  themselves  before  Demetrios  the  city-besieger, 
centuries  ago:  did  the  possession  of  the  tongue  of  Hera- 
kleitos  and  Herodotos  endow  the  wretched  provincials  with 
any  civic  virtue  —  or  for  that  matter,  with  any  virtue  in 
particular?  They  acclaimed  the  conquering  king  of 
Pontus  as  the  earth-subduing  Bakchos,  incarnate  once 
more,  and  obeyed  him  in  all  things.  Clearly  the  Pontic 
barbarian  was  an  evil  smaller  in  their  eyes  than  the 
Roman  publican.  Nay,  they  called  him  God,  Father, 
Preserver  of  Asia.  The  Rhodians  alone,  hard-headed 
politicians  of  old,  veritable  Venetians  in  their  sagacity, 
defied  the  Pontic  tyrant. 


ROMAN  SPIRIT  AND  ROMAN  CHARACTER       337 

When  Sulla  definitely  restored  the  authority  of  Rome 
among  these  eastern  Greeks,  he  placed  upon  the  miserable 
provincials  indemnities  so  crushing  (20,000  talents)  that 
interest  and  compound  interest  ultimately  raised  the  very 
principal  to  a  sum  more  than  tenfold  the  original  amount. 

But  we  must  proceed:  statutes  were  enacted  by  the 
Romans  themselves  which  recognized  the  evil  of  oppres- 
sion as  very  real  and  as  calling  for  remedies:  even  dur- 
ing the  time  when  Polybius  composed  his  felicitation  of 
Roman  polity,  in  149  B.C.  and  after,  there  was  passed  the 
Lex  Calpurnia  de  Repetundis :  i.e.  concerning  restitution 
of  extorted  (moneys) :  it  was,  in  purpose  and  aim,  really 
meant  to  protect  the  political  dependents  of  the  common- 
wealth. 

But  the  execution  of  such  measures  of  punishing  the 
privileged  class  for  its  exploitation  of  the  provinces  was 
also  generally  in  the  hands  of  the  same  class:  these  ever 
identified  themselves  with  the  commonwealth  and  were 
not  sincere  in  anything  which  could  seriously  impair  their 
wealth  and  vast  profits. 

We  have  no  time  here  to  even  cite  Cicero's  "Verrines." 

The  gentle  Vergil,  some  forty-five  years  later,  penned 
phrases  which  fairly  exhibit  Roman  spirit  and  character, 
certainly  Roman  pride: 

"  Romanes,  rerum  dominos  gentemque  togatam  " 

of  that  famous  yielding  to  the  Greeks  the  primacy  of  cul- 
ture and  originality  in  arts  and  letters  (Aen.,  6,  847  sqq.^); 
but  as  for  Rome: 

"  Tu  regere  imperio  populos,  Romane,  memento 
(Hae  tibi  erunt  artes)  pacisque  imponere  morem, 
Parcere  subjectis  et  debellare  superbos." 

Debellare  superbos  —  very  fine  phrase,  but  quite  un- 
historical:  haughty  in  the  estimation  of  the  Roman 
was  every  one  who  did  not  submit  without  war,  and  loved 
his  own  freedom,  his  own  nationality,  his  patrimony  in- 
deed. Scholars  have  sought  academic  peace  of  soul  by 
eulogizing  a  cosmic  mission  of  Rome:  she  carried  the 


338  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

Holy  Grail,  if  I  may  say  so,  of  Greek  culture  for  the  un- 
born nations  of  the  Occident. 

How  much  was  actually  transmitted?  Was  the  best 
transmitted  ?  In  our  time  thousands  are  spent  to  unearth 
some  rows  of  seats  in  an  amphitheatre  where  a  pantomime, 
perhaps,  or  coarser  entertainment  furnished  diversion  to  a 
community  itself  morally,  politically,  culturally  defunct. 
We  felicitate  ourselves  on  futile  remnants  of  archaeology, 
we  gaze  at  the  arches  of  the  Aqua  Claudia,  or  we  overvalue 
every  little  piece  of  mere  shell,  now  inanimate,  while  the 
very  spirit  and  soul,  the  best  letters  and  the  foremost  per- 
sonalities of  the  past,  are  mouldering  in  libraries.  The 
parings  of  finger  nails  and  the  heels  of  shoes  we  gloat  over 
in  yielding  to  a  veritable  childlike  faculty  of  interest:  the 
blazing  eye,  the  deep  furrow  of  the  pondering  mind,  the 
grave  lesson  of  truth-loving  historiography  —  these  we  let 
severely  alone. 


NOTE.  —  Niebuhr's  vision  of  things  differs  profoundly  from  that  of 
Mommsen.  The  latter's  "  Staatsrecht "  is  probably  the  most  author- 
itative presentation  in  our  day.  Still  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
the  Berlin  antiquarian  had  an  itch  to  construct  completeness  often- 
times when  the  data  were  but  few  and  fragmentary.  As  for  Madvig, 
the  work  of  his  old  age  ("Verfassung  u.  Verwaltung  des  Romischen 
Staates"  1881-1882)  seems  in  part  to  have  been  called  forth  by  the 
somewhat  dogmatic  acceptation  attained  by  Mommsen's  books.  He 
has  no  sympathy  for  deductions  from  subjective  legal  speculations  or 
for  the  creation  of  quasi-Roman  principles,  which  are  really  the  re- 
sult of  academic  reflection. 

The  Twelve  Tables,  Gaius,  Justinian's  little  manual  and  partic- 
ularly the  larger  extracts  in  the  Digest  reveal  the  Roman  spirit  and 
character  —  if  anything  in  their  literary  remains  does.  The  artifi- 
ciality of  Latin  verse  —  its  destination  for  a  small  elite,  its  dependence 
for  theme  and  matter  on  the  Greeks — all  these  things  are  familiar 
enough.  Unfortunately  in  our  day  the  growing  desuetude  of  Greek 
pursuits  brings  it  about  that  this  exotic  character  of  Roman  letters 
is  not  as  strongly  felt  by  the  exclusive  Latinist  as  it  is  by  Greek 
scholars.  James  Russell  Lowell  in  his  essay  on  Swinburne  has  spoken 
of  these  things  with  true  judgment  and  with  felicitous  phrase.  "  Die 
romische  Litteratur  steht  neben  der  griechischen  wie  die  deutsche 
Orangerie  neben  dem  Sicilischen  Orangenwald ;  man  kann  an  beiden 
sich  erfreuen,  aber  sie  neben  einander  auch  nur  zu  denken  geht 
nicht  an."  These  words  are  Mommsen's  ("Rom.  Hist.,"  Book  III, 


ROMAN  SPIRIT  AND  ROMAN  CHARACTER       339 

Chap.  14).  More  exact  I  believe  to  limit  this  valuation  by  applying 
it  to  Latin  verse. 

Livy's  delineation  of  older  Rome  is  swayed  largely  by  conscious 
idealization.  Dionysius  suffers  from  Hellenic  vanity:  the  Romans 
must  be  Greeks.  The  cloud  of  grammatikoi  who  came  to  Rome  in 
every  way  pursued  similar  aims.  Euaudros  the  Arcadian  on  the 
Palatine :  Latin  a  variant  of  this  2Eolic  subdialect :  it  is  a  wearisome 
and  persistent  fiction. 

The  exempla  of  Valerius  Maximus  in  their  way  are  a  mirror  of 
Roman  consciousness.  Of  Varro  I  shall  have  something  to  say  in  my 
note  on  Chapter  XV. 

The  data  of  the  republican  history  of  Rome  are  preserved  and 
arranged  in  the  most  convenient  way  in :  "  Romische  Zeittafeln  von 
Rom's  Grundung  bis  auf  Augustus  Tod,"  von  Dr.  Ernst  Wilhelm 
Fischer,  Altona,  1846.  There  is  a  detritus  and  an  erosion  of  time  and 
newer  production  :  this  book,  like  unto  those  of  Henry  Fynes  Clinton, 
defies  time  and  the  vacillation  of  academic  standards  ;  slight  to  such 
works  are 

"  Armor  urn  series  fugaque  tempo  ruin." 


CHAPTER  XV 

RITUAL  AND  WORSHIP  AMONG  ROMAN  INSTITUTIONS 

RITE  and  ritual,  vow  and  votive,  augury  and  inaugurate, 
to  divine  and  divination,  pontifical,  prodigy  and  prodigious, 
sacred  and  profane,  propitious,  consecration,  saint,  omen, 
sacerdotal,  temple,  fauna,  expiate,  superstition,  and  religion, 
and  other  words  of  English  speech  are  veritable  offspring 
and  nestlings  of  Roman  institutions,  given  to  mankind  by 
the  religion,  so-called,  of  the  Roman  commonwealth. 

Few  themes  are  there  in  the  domain  of  ancient  lore  in 
which  arid  antiquarianism  can  disport  itself  as  here. 
After  Preller  and  Wissowa,  it  is  somewhat  futile  to  hold 
forth  on  Mars  Campester,  Mars  Flcanus,  Mars  Loucetius, 
Mars  Pacifer,  Mars  Ultor,  Mars  Victor ;  somewhat  su- 
perfluous to  expatiate  on  Juno  Caelestis,  Juno  Caprotina, 
Juno  Curitis,  Juno  Fluonia,  Juno  Lacinia,  Juno  Moneta, 
on  the  Capitoline  Hill,  or  Juno  elsewhere ;  somewhat  less 
than  labelling  another  frame  of  dry  leaves  in  the  herbaria 
of  Time.  Were  there  eighty-four  epithets  of  Jupiter  or 
more  ?  Perhaps  more.  Probably  Varro  could,  if  he 
cared,  have  made  a  larger  catalogue,  and  Nigidius  Figulus, 
Verrius  Flaccus,  eminent  Roman  antiquarians  of  Cicero's 
and  of  Augustus's  time,  might  possibly  have  almost 
equalled  the  former's  achievement. 

It  will  be  quite  clear,  presumably,  that  Roman  "  religion  " 
and  "  religions  "  had  almost  no  real  relation  to  soul  and 
spirit,  and  as  for  postulating  a  kind  of  conduct,  would 
have  been  almost  as  nothing. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  fancy  of  the  Latin  ploughmen 
and  shepherds  rose  not  much  above  soil  and  field  and  the 

340 


RITUAL  AND  WORSHIP  341 

practical  concerns  of  life  and  livelihood :  strictly  speaking, 
there  are  no  legends  of  gods  and  men  comparable  to  the 
fathomless  fountain  of  Hellenic  fancy  and  local  lore.  If 
Pausanias  had  extended  his  antiquarian  tour  into  Italy, 
his  record  would  have  been  too  meagre  for  publication. 
"  Roman  mythology  "  is  a  misnomer  hallowed  by  academic 
tradition,  but  a  faulty  and  somewhat  empty  phrase.  Picus 
and  Faunus,  Ilia,  Juturna,  Camilla :  the  list  is  soon  com- 
pleted :  a  few  dry  peas  rattling  around  in  a  large  dry 
bladder.  And  so  a  Dionysios  of  Halicarnassus,  author 
and  professor,  tells  us  that  he  sailed  for  Italy  (in  30  B.C.), 
and  that  he  spent  twenty-two  years  ("Antiq.  Rom.," 
1,  7)  in  learning  Latin  and  gathering  materials  for  his 
history  of  Rome  to  be  carried  from  the  beginnings  down 
to  the  First  War  with  Carthage  (264  B.C.).  Clearly  he 
was  determined  to  cover  the  ground  left  unoccupied  by 
Poly  bios  a  little  more  than  a  century  before.  In  that 
critical  span  of  time  the  polity  of  the  Tiber-city  had  passed 
through  a  slow  agony  in  which  dissolution  of  republican 
government  ran  its  course :  still  to  the  historical  view 
and  to  the  vision  of  the  past,  Rome  appeared  then  as  a 
state  greatly  transcending  AssjTian  and  Persian  world 
power  or  the  dynasties  erected  on  the  fabric  of  Alexander's 
conquests.  Dionysios  rejects  the  hypothesis  of  supreme 
luck  savagely  advanced  by  unwilling  Greek  subjects  :  he 
rather  claims  for  Rome  intrinsic  factors  of  greatness, 
namely,  preeminence  (1,  5)  in  religious  reverence,  justice, 
self-control.  We  might  fairly  bring  in  here  the  Roman 
terms  of  Religio,  Jus,  Grravitas.  Similar  views  are  put 
forward  farther  on  (2,  12)  ;  also  he  notes  the  positive 
absence  of  myths  and  legends,  which  are  essentially  blas- 
phemous or  accusatory,  legends  "wicked,  unprofitable, 
unseemly,"  viz.  such  as  filled  the  dawn  of  all  Hellenic 
records;  no  lamentation  of  Demeter  as  acted  by  Greek 
women,  no  all-night  celebrations  by  both  sexes,  no  sacred 
rites,  but  "everything  that  was  said  or  done  about  the 
gods  was  done  cautiously  "  (eu\a/3<w<?)  ;  their  litanies  and 
their  ritual  clearly  were  dignified  and  becoming,  even 
"though  manners  were  now  corrupted." 


342  TESTIMONIUM  ANIALE 

Vergil's  .^Eneid  became  national  immediately  upon 
its  appearance,  19-18  B.C.,  and  still  that  industrious  and 
slowly  composing  author,  profoundly  conscious  of  his 
composite  and  erudite  task,  a  veritable  bee  and  ransack- 
ing all  nooks  and  corners  of  Italian  tradition,  still,  in  the 
ulterior  parts  of  his  Iliad  section  (9-12,  scenes  of  carnage, 
and  heroes  brought  together  from  the  entire  peninsula) 
he  has  first  exhausted  the  Greek  legends  dealing  with 
Italy  and  finally  resorts  to  robbing  rivers,  brooks,  foun- 
tains, tribes,  lakes,  of  their  names,  to  endow  his  vague 
and  vapory  figures  with  a  little  life  and  movement. 

Very  early  was  the  worship  of  Faunus,  who  blesses 
calving  and  foaling,  under  whose  good-will  flocks  grow 
fast,  a  force  which  the  farmer  must  propitiate.  The 
Augustan  poets,  of  course,  assimilated  him  deliberately  to 
the  Arcadian  Pan,  but  we  may  be  quite  sure  that  the  hus- 
bandmen of  old  and  simple  Rome  knew  nothing  of  the 
"lover  of  fleeing  nymphs."  The  needs  and  concerns  of 
farming  and  farming  folk  at  once  lead  us  to  the  elder 
Cato's  book  on  Agriculture.  As  soon  as  the  owner  comes 
out  to  his  farm,  he  "  will  greet  the  Lar  Familiaris  or  house- 
hold god.  The  steward  (yilicus)  will  see  that  the  holidays 
(ferice)  be  kept  on  the  farm  (Chap.  5).  He  shall  not 
sacrifice,  except  the  Compitalia,  at  the  cross-roads,  where 
neighbors'  lands  met  (16.). 

"  The  vow  (votum)  in  behalf  of  the  oxen,  that  they  be 
well,  you  must  make  in  this  wise.  To  Mars,  and  to  Sil- 
vanus  in  the  forest,  by  day  you  must  make  a  vow,  one 
vow  for  each  head  of  cattle.  Of  wheaten  flour,  three 
pounds  ;  of  lard,  four  pounds  and  a  half,  and  of  clear  meat 
(pulpa) ;  of  wine  three  gills,  this  you  may  put  together  in 
one  dish,  and  the  wine  likewise  you  may  put  into  one  dish. 
This  sacrifice  either  slave  or  free  may  perform.  When 
the  sacrifice  shall  have  been  made,  you  must  consume  it 
immediately  in  the  same  place.  A  woman  shall  not  be 
present  at  the  sacrifice,  nor  shall  she  see  in  what  manner 
it  is  performed.  This  vow  you  may  vow  annually  if  you 
wish"  (Cato,  "R.  R.,"  83). 

The  prayer  to  Jupiter  Dapalis  is  prescribed  by  the  old 


RITUAL  AND  WORSHIP  343 

Roman  (Chap.  132) :  "  Jupiter  of  the  Feast,  because  there 
ought  to  be  offered  to  thee  in  my  house  and  household  a 
chalice  of  wine  for  feast,  on  account  of  this  thing  thou 
shalt  be  extolled  (macte)  in  the  offering  of  this  sacrifice." 
He  shall  wash  his  hands,  thereupon  shall  take  the  wine : 
"  Jupiter  of  the  Feast,  thou  shalt  be  extolled  by  the  offer- 
ing of  that  feast  there,  thou  shalt  be  extolled  by  the  wine 
of  libation."  "  To  Vesta  you  shall  give  if  you  will.  The 
feast  for  Jupiter  shall  be  an  as  of  money's  worth,  and  an 
urna  of  wine.  To  Jupiter  you  shall  reverently  consecrate 
by  his  own  touch.  Afterwards,  when  you  have  performed 
the  feast,  you  must  sow  millet,  garlic,  lentils." 

"To  establish  a  sacred  grove  in  the  Roman  manner 
(Romano  more)  you  must  proceed  thus.  Slay  a  pig  as 
expiatory  sacrifice  (piaculo)  and  thus  you  must  formulate 
(concipito)  the  words :  if  thou  art  a  god,  if  thou  art  a 
goddess,  to  whom  this  is  set  apart,  as  it  is  right  (ius)  to 
make  expiatory  sacrifice  to  thee  with  a  pig  for  the  purpose 
of  restraining  that  sacredness  and  for  the  sake  of  these 
things,  whether  I  shall  do  so  or  whether  any  one  by  my 
orders,  to  the  end  that  this  be  done  correctly,  for  the  sake 
of  that  thing,  in  sacrificing  this  expiatory  pig  I  pray  good 
prayers,  that  thou  be  willing  and  inclined  to  me,  my  house, 
my  slaves,  my  children :  for  the  sake  of  these  things  be 
thou  extolled  in  the  sacrificing  of  this  pig  as  an  expiation." 
If  you  shall  desire  to  dig,  sacrifice  a  second  sacrifice  of 
expiation  :  add  further  this :  "  for  the  sake  of  doing  work  " 
(Chap.  139). 

The  purification  of  a  field  was  done  thus  (Chap.  141) : 
victims,  a  swine,  a  sheep,  a  steer,  were  first  led  around  the 
confines  of  the  piece  of  land  in  question:  the  formula  of 
prayer  is  furnished  again  by  the  author:  "  With  the  good- 
will of  the  gods  and  what  may  turn  out  well,  I  commit  to 
thee,  O  Manius,  that  thou  makest  it  thy  concern  to  purify 
with  that  offering  of  swine  —  sheep  —  steer  —  my  farm, 
my  field,  my  soil,  in  accordance  with  the  part  thereof  that 
thou  biddest  them  to  be  driven  around  or  boldest  that  they 
should  be  carried  around."  "Accost  thou  by  way  of  be- 
ginning Janus  and  Jupiter  with  wine  and  then  speak 


344  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

thus:  Father  Mars,  thee  I  pray  and  beg,  that  thou  be 
willing  and  inclined  to  me,  my  house  and  our  body  of 
slaves,  for  the  sake  of  which  thing  I  have  ordered  that 
swine  —  sheep  —  steer,  be  driven  around  my  field,  soil 
and  farm,  that  thou  fend  off  and  turn  away  distempers, 
seen  and  unseen,  privation  and  desolation,  failure  of  crops 
and  foul  weather  wouldst  keep  off,  ward  off  and  turn 
away;  and  that  thou  permit  products,  grain,  vineyards 
and  shrubbery  to  grow  large  and  turn  out  well,  that  thou 
keep  shepherds  and  flocks  safe  and  grant  good  salvation 
and  health  to  me,  my  house  and  our  body  of  slaves ;  for 
these  things'  sake,  for  the  sake  of  purifying  my  farm,  soil 
and  field  and  of  making  purification,  as  I  have  said,  be 
thou  extolled  by  the  offering  up  of  this  suckling  swine 
—  sheep — steer:  Father  Mars,  for  the  sake  of  the  same 
matter,  be  thou  extolled  with  these  suckling  swine  — 
sheep  —  steer,"  etc.  (151). 

"  The  steward's  wife  shall  not  sacrifice  nor  give  an 
order  to  any  one  to  sacrifice  in  her  behalf  without  the 
order  of  master  or  mistress."  (Clearly  forces  are  set  in 
motion  by  sacrifice.)  "  On  the  Kalends,  Ides,  Nones,  when 
there  shall  be  a  holiday  (festus  dies)  she  shall  put  a 
garland  upon  the  hearth,  and  during  the  same  days  she 
shall  worship  the  household  god  (lar  familiaris)  as  the 
house  affords." 

Two  things  stand  out  in  these  forms  of  ritual  and  wor- 
ship: the  advantage  sought  for  the  welfare  of  the  wor- 
shipper and  that  quaint  explicitness  and  quasi-contractual 
fulness  and  comprehensiveness  of  these  verba  concepta. 

The  ceremonial  amid  which  the  "  Brothers  of  the 
ploughed  fields"  (Plin.,  "N.  H.,"  18,  6)  sacrificed  to 
Mars  in  spring,  this  rite  was  for  the  entire  commonwealth, 
to  make  the  power  chiefly  instrumental,  benevolent  and 
propitious  for  the  expected  crops  of  the  state.  In  time 
the  old  Saturnian  formulae  became  unintelligible  to  all 
but  Roman  antiquarians. 

But  the  Mas  maiorum  was  here  as  always  the  determin- 
ing and  dominant  consideration.  Mars  had  heard  and 
understood  these  words  of  old :  unwise  and  irreligious  to 


RITUAL  AND  WORSHIP  345 

change  them.  Maintenance  of  ceremonial  and  ritual  thus 
became  the  central  thing  in  the  consciousness  and  concern 
of  the  Roman  worshipper. 

But  this  seems  a  proper  point  to  go  forward  to  inquire 
about  the  terms  religio  and  religiones.  Putting  aside,  in 
this  place,  the  divergences  of  etymological  opinions,  and 
despairing  of  having  the  admirable  Thesaurus  of  the  five 
universities  reach  this  word  before  my  death,  I  must  be 
content  with  a  few  simple  definitions.  Nettleship  (con- 
tributions to  Latin  Lexicography,  1889)  has  devoted  three 
pages,  570-573,  to  the  matter.  Clearly,  it  is  something 
that  binds  and  restrains  us  from  doing  that  which  we  prob- 
ably would  do,  or  would  like  to  do,  without  this  binding 
or  restraining  something. 

Thus  the  Flamen  Dialis  is  prohibited  from  riding  on  a 
horse:  it  is  a  religio  to  him,  but  not  to  every  one.  It  is 
often  thus  a  scruple  that  bars  or  checks.  Thus  one  can- 
not remove  trophies  once  dedicated. 

There  are,  per  contra,  binding  obligations  which  compel 
one  to  do  or  observe  something,  removing  that  something 
from  the  sphere  of  whim,  or  argument,  proof,  demonstra- 
tion, nay  defence:  it  is  absolute  and  axiomatic.  Hence, 
Cicero  often  speaks  of  divina  religio;  there  is  a  phrase  of 
religio  deorum  immortalium,  and  religiones  are  religious 
acts,  rites,  ritual.  Almost  every  occurrence  of  this  elusive 
word  may  be  pinned  down  (apart  from  the  attitude  of 
scrupulous  concern  in  the  human  conscience)  to  some  out- 
ward act,  observance,  rite,  ceremonial. 

But  to  move  again  from  the  abstract  to  the  concrete: 
let  us  take  up  a  few  articles  in  Festus  (Verrius  Flaccus, 
fl.  10  B.C.).  "  Profanum  is  that  which  is  not  held  by 
the  religion  of  a  sanctuary  (/awww),  i.e.  where  one  is 
not  under  that  restraint.  Religiosus  is  not  only  he  who 
rates  highly  the  sacred  character  of  the  gods,  but  also  is 
dutiful  (officiosus)  towards  men.  Now  religious  days  are 
those  on  which  it  is  held  a  sin  (nefas)  to  be  active  unless 
it  be  in  the  sphere  of  necessity;  as  are  the  thirty-six  days 
which  are  called  black  (atri).  .  .  and  those  on  which  the 
'mundus'  is  open."  This  was  a  central  pit  in  Italian 


346  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

communities,  a  kind  of  reverse  of  the  firmament  above  us. 
It  was  sacred  to  the  Di  Manes,  i.e.  to  the  spirits  of  the 
departed  and  to  the  deities  of  the  lower  world,  Orcus, 
Ceres,  Tellus  (Preller,  2,  67).  Pit  closed  by  a  stone 
called  the  lapis  manalis.  Tellus  holds  the  dead,  likewise 
she  send  up  the  crops,  on  those  three  days  (Aug.  24,  Oct. 
5,  Nov.  8).  It  was  held  that  the  spirits  could  freely  pass 
up  and  down:  and  consequently  these  days  were  religiosi. 
Says  Varro  (Macrob.,  "Sat.,"  1,  16,  18): 

"  When  the  mundus  is  open,  the  gate,  as  it  were,  is  ajar 
of  the  gloomy  divinities  and  of  the  beings  in  the  lower 
world.  Therefore,  it  is  religiosum  (i.e.  prohibited,  op- 
posed to  the  will  of  gods)  not  only  to  join  battle  but  also 
to  hold  a  levy  for  the  sake  of  war,  and  for  the  soldier  to 
begin  a  march,  to  put  to  sea,  to  take  a  wife  into  your  home 
for  the  purpose  of  getting  children." 

The  tomb  also  where  burial  has  actually  been  made, 
is  a  locus  religiosum  (Gaius,  "  Inst.,"  2,6).  When  the  mor- 
tal remains  are  transferred,  then  the  spot  ceases  to  be 
religiosus. 

But  let  us  cite  a  few  more  data  from  Verrius  Flaccus 
(generally  cited  by  the  name  of  the  abstract-maker, 
Festus).  Religioni  est,  i.e.  it  is  a  matter  of  prohibitive 
scruple  to  certain  people  to  go  out  (from  Rome)  by  the 
porta  Carmentalis;  and  to  have  the  Senate  held  in  the 
temple  of  Janus  which  is  outside  of  the  same,  because  by 
that  gate  went  out  the  three  hundred  and  six  Fabii  and 
were  subsequently  all  slain  on  the  river  Cremera,  whereas 
in  the  temple  of  Janus  the  decree  of  the  Senate  had  been 
adopted  that  they  should  march." 

Conformity,  then,  to  a  specific  sphere  of  ancestral  tra- 
dition (mos  maiorum)  is  the  essence  of  Roman  religion,  it 
is  indeed  a  species  of  civic  obedience,  a  postulate  of  politi- 
cal loyalty,  and  it  is,  of  a  truth,  as  inclusive  of  observance 
as  is  any  form  of  patriotism. 

But  to  proceed,  what  is  rite  and  ritual?  Ritus,  says 
Festus,  is  "  an  established  manner  in  performing  sacri- 
fices." And  what  were  these  ?  The  most  eminent  and 
the  most  conspicuous  were  those  in  honor  of  Jupiter 


RITUAL  AND  WORSHIP  347 

Optimus  Maximus.  In  these  the  very  core  and  essence  of 
Roman  sentiment  was  revealed. 

Festus's  Ordo  Sacerdotum  gives  to  us  the  official  hier- 
archy: "Greatest  seems  the  Rex  (i.e.  the  'King'  of 
sacrificial  functions,  successor  to  the  old  political  '  Kings  ' 
in  this  particular  limitation);  then  the  Flamen  Dialis 
(priest  for  life  of  Jupiter) ;  after  this  one  the  Martialis, 
in  fourth  place  the  Quirinalis,  in  fifth  the  Pontifex 
Maximus."  Their  rank  and  precedence,  e.g.  at  official 
dinners,  was  carefully  maintained. 

In  the  great  Roman  and  Latin  cyclopsedia  of  the 
Augustan  age,  by  Verrius  Flaccus,  the  work  of  elabo- 
rate detail,  written  in  the  generation  after  Varro  (Letter 
A  had  four  books,  e.g.;  P  had  five),  the  vast  original  now 
preserved  in  the  poor  abstract  of  the  absurd  Festus  —  in 
this  work,  I  say,  I  counted  some  hundred  and  seventy- 
five  articles  on  rite,  ritual,  priests,  prayer,  ceremony, 
holidays,  etc.  In  this  large  body,  however,  I  found  that 
three  distinct  topics  or  matters  stood  forth  above  the 
rest :  Jupiter  and  his  regular  priest  (Flamen  Dialis), 
Sacrifices,  Auspices,  —  these  three. 

I  believe  I  shall  be  faithful  both  to  my  historical  task 
and  to  the  interests  of  my  readers  if  I  shall  largely  devote 
myself  to  these  three. 

1.  Observe  that  the  priest  of  Jupiter  is  not  called 
Jovialis  but  Dialis,  Light :  the  bright  firmament  above 
us,  under  which  men  live,  exist,  struggle,  prosper  or  fail : 
Dium  sometimes  is  a  quasi-impersonal  neuter  form  — 
light  merges  in  dies,  day:  still  sub  Jove  frigido  is  the 
firmament,  even  at  night.  Dium  fulgur  they  called  light- 
ning of  the  daytime,  which  they  believed  to  be  of  Jupiter, 
as  the  lightning  of  night  the  property  of  "  Summanus" 
the  power  on  high.  Flamen  (flag-men)  is  strictly  the 
"  kindler  "  of  the  sacrifice.  A  place  struck  by  lightning 
was  at  once  deemed  to  become  religiosus,  because  the  god 
seemed  to  have  dedicated  it  (dicasse)  to  himself.  Liba- 
tions of  new  wine  were  made,  not  to  Bacchus,  but  to 
Jupiter.  Libation  is  made  to  the  god  of  Light  and  Life, 
before  man  tastes  of  it  (v.  Galpar) .  The  Flamen  Dialis 


348  TESTIMOXIUM  ANDLE 

was  not  permitted  to  touch  ivy  nor  to  utter  the  name  of 
it,  because  ivy  overcomes  everything  to  which  it  clings. 
But  not  even  a  solid,  complete  ring  was  that  functionary 
permitted  to  wear,  or  have  about  or  on  his  person  any 
knot,  for  he  represents  the  supreme  ruler  (v.  Ederam). 
Deus  clearly  is  a  mere  variant  and  so  phonetically  later 
or  younger  than  Dius.  The  Lord  of  Light  is  the  divine 
being,  primary  and  principal,  who  has  given  his  name  to 
be  a  generic  designation  of  all  gods.  I  will  leave  infer- 
ences to  my  reader.  For  Jupiter  is  Diu  piter. 

But  to  return  to  his  priest.  He  may  not  touch  a  bean 
nor  name  it,  because  that  vegetable  is  believed  to  have  a 
bearing  on  the  dead.  For  on  the  Lemuralia  (a  kind  of  All 
Souls,  May  9,  11,  13,  when  temples  were  closed,  and  wed- 
dings were  forbidden  (Ovid,  "  Fasti,"  5,  485  »<?<?. ))>  beans 
were  thrown  to  the  spooks  (larvae)  and  the  bean  further 
was  sacrificed  on  the  Parentalia,  February  21,  to  the 
"  gods  of  the  ancestors,"  di  Parentum  ;  furthermore,  the 
letter  L,  for  Lucius,  Grief,  seemed  to  appear  in  its  blossom 
(v.  Fabam). 

Flaminius  camillus  was  called  the  boy,  freeborn,  whose 
father  and  mother  were  still  living,  who  served  the  priest 
of  Jupiter  at  sacrifices.  Similarly  was  attended  the  wife 
of  the  priest,  the  Flaminica  Dialis,  by  a  young  girl  whose 
father  and  mother  were  still  living.  This  insistence  on 
life  calls  for  no  exegesis  or  epexegesis,  I  believe.  Fune- 
bres  tibice,  the  flutes  played  at  exequies,  the  Flamen  D. 
is  not  permitted  to  hear. 

In  the  temple  of  Jupiter  Feretrius  they  kept  the  sceptre 
or  staff  by  which  they  swore,  and  the  flintstone  (lapis 
silex)  which  they  used  in  the  ceremonial  of  concluding 
treaties  (v.  Feretrius). 

In  a  fire-colored  garb  was  draped  every  bride  for  the 
sake  of  the  good  omen,  because  the  Flaminica  continually 
wore  it,  i.e.  the  wife  of  the  flamen,  who  was  not  permitted 
to  make  a  divorce  (v.  Flammeo).  The  flamen  also  has  a 
lictor  to  attend  him.  Fire  could  not  be  carried  from  the 
house  of  the  flamen  except  for  the  sake  of  sacrifice.  In 
the  entire  ritual  the  aim  was  to  preserve  every  detail  as 


RITUAL  AND   WORSHIP  349 

it  ever  had  been.  Thus  the  flamines  performed  sacrifice 
garbed  with  the  use  of  bronze  clasps  or  fibulae  because  the 
use  of  that  metal  was  the  oldest  known.  The  games  in 
honor  of  Jupiter  were  called  The  Great  Games  (magni 
ludi)  because  they  deemed  him  first  of  gods.  Whenever 
the  Flamen  Dialis  walked  abroad,  there  strode  before  him 
heralds  (Prceciamitatores^),  calling  upon  all  men  to  abstain 
from  labor,  because  the  flamen  must  not  see  any  one  ac- 
tually working.  It  was  religiosum  for  the  priest  to  see  it. 
Further,  he  must  not  see  the  levies  ready  to  march  out  to 
war. 

The  chief  manifestation,  the  most  palpable  revelation 
of  the  Lord  of  Light,  was  in  the  celestial  phenomenon  of 
lightning  and  of  the  thunderbolt.  Q.  Fabius,  one  of  that 
noble  clan,  who  was  called  Eburnus  from  the  ivory-like 
fairness  of  his  skin,  when  a  boy  was  struck  by  lightning, 
recovering,  but  keeping  on  his  person  a  mark  from  that 
experience.  He  was  called  pullus  Jovis,  the  "  chick  "  of 
Jove. 

And  here  we  observe  that  curious  dependency  on  their 
Etruscan  neighbors  and  subjects.  From  these  indeed  the 
Romans  wholly  adopted  the  Goddess  of  Intelligence, 
Minerva  (Me-nerfa,  Menrfa,  in  Tuscan),  not  from  their 
Greek  neighbors  of  Cumse,  or  Capua,  or  Puteoli. 

Authority  and  precedent  —  these  the  Romans  observed 
with  anxious  care.  They  believed  in  the  lore  of  the 
Etruscans,  their  disciplina,  a  fixed  and  definite  theory. 
These  claimed  to  know  how  to  interpret  the  will  of  God 
as  revealed  through  these  phenomena  of  the  sky,  no  less 
than  that  other  mode  of  ascertainment,  the  viewing  of  the 
inner  organs  (exta)  of  victims.  When  we  ask  on  what 
the  Romans  based  their  confidence  and  trust,  we  may  say 
it  was  experience,  or  quasi-experience  of  results,  so-called. 
These  were  connected  with  Prodigia,  Ostenta,  portenta, 
monstra.  This  is  no  place  even  for  a  sketch  of  the  Etrus- 
can discipline,  contained  in  their  books  of  lightning,  books 
of  thunder,  and  books  setting  forth  the  significance  of 
victims'  livers,  lungs,  hearts,  or  what  not. 

There  were   sixteen  sections    into    which  the  Tuscan 


350  TESTIMONIUM 

expert  divided  the  heavens  and  the  circular  prospect  of  the 
observer.  A  thunderbolt  which  strikes  any  locality  con- 
nected with  government  and  sovereignty  was  called  fulmen 
regale :  it  portended  civil  war,  destruction  of  government. 
But  we  will,  perhaps,  be  served  best  by  a  few  citations  from 
Verrius  Flaccus.  "  Renovativum  fulgur,  Renewed  gleam  - 
of-lightning,  it  is  called  when  in  consequence  of  some 
gleam-of -lightning  a  *  function '  has  begun  to  result,  if 
a  similar  gleam-of-lightning  (fulgur)  has  occurred,  which 
carries  the  same  meaning.  There  was  a  statue  of  an  actor 
who,  once  upon  a  time,  was  struck  by  lightning  and  buried 
on  Janiculum.  His  bones,  later  on,  in  consequence  of 
prodigia  and  the  replies  of  oracles,  by  a  decree  of  the 
senate  were  removed  within  the  city  and  buried  in  the 
sanctuary  of  Vulcan,  which  is  above  the  comitium "  (v. 
Statua) . 

When  grave  crises  approached,  when  disastrous  things 
had  actually  overwhelmed  the  state,  then  vows  were  made, 
vows  which  even  in  their  form  and  verba  concepta  remind 
us  of  a  public  contract  or  quasi-contract.  These  acts,  as 
all  acts  of  that  religion,  are  exclusively  concerned  with  the 
question  —  what  will  happen  ?  Will  we  fare  well  or  ill, 
or,  at  least,  no  worse  ?  Will  we  prosper  ?  The  state 
binds  itself  to  do  something,  if  the  Deity  grants  the  de- 
sired matter  (Wissowa,  pp.  20  «<?.). 

"  Here,"  so  Livy  makes  Romulus  say  (1,  12),  "  I  vow  a 
temple  to  thee,  Stayer  (of  battle),  Jupiter,  which  shall  be 
a  reminder  to  later  generations,  that  through  thy  very 
present  help  the  city  was  saved."  In  the  terrible  year 
217  B.C.,  after  the  catastrophe  of  Lake  Trasumenus,  in 
accordance  with  an  official  report  requested  from  the 
collegium  of  the  pontifices,  to  wit:  "If  the  state  of  the 
Roman  people  (and)  of  the  Quirites  shall  stand  at  the  ex- 
piration of  the  period  of  five  years  ensuing,  as  I  wish  it 
and  he  (Jupiter)  shall  have  kept  it  safely  in  these  present 
wars,  the  Roman  people  of  the  Quirites  shall  give  and  be- 
stow a  gift:  (these  present  wars)  which  war  the  Roman 
people  has  with  the  Carthaginian,  and  which  wars  are  with 
the  Gauls  who  are  this  side  of  the  Alps :  what  spring  shall 


RITUAL  AND  WORSHIP  351 

produce  from  the  flocks  of  swine,  sheep,  goats,  and  what 
shall  be  (otherwise)  profane,  shall  be  sacrificed  to  Jupiter, 
the  obligation  to  begin  to  run  from  the  day  which  senate 
and  people  shall  order,"  etc. 

The  vowing  of  games  to  reconcile  an  angry  or  indifferent 
deity  ?  No  sackcloth  or  ashes  here.  No,  the  gods  were 
to  be  appeased  by  being  entertained  and  amused  (Censori- 
nus,  Chap.  12). 

The  assumption  or  presumption  of  the  substantial 
identity  of  the  gods'  concerns  and  sympathies  with  those  of 
men  puzzles  us  much  more  in  the  case  of  the  grave  and 
well-poised  Romans  than  of  the  volatile  nation  reared  and 
nurtured  on  Homer.  At  Circensian  games,  then,  in  Rome, 
the  very  idols  (simulacra)  of  pertinent  gods  were  driven 
into  the  assemblage:  the  car  was  called  tensa.  But  as 
the  gods  were  given  of  grain,  cattle,  wine,  of  their  gifts, 
why  should  not  the  commonwealth  ask  their  tutelary 
deities  to  share  in  the  pleasures  of  the  commonwealth? 
This  chariot  was  of  silver  and  ivory.  It  was  a  gorgeous 
parade  :  young  men  mounted  and  on  foot,  athletes, 
dancers,  chief  entertainers,  (ludii)  musicians.  Says 
Cicero  (" De  Haruspicum  Response"  23),  " Or,  if  a  player 
(ludius^  has  halted,  or  a  flute-player  has  made  a  sudden 
pause,  or  that  boy  whose  father  and  mother  must  be  liv- 
ing has  not  held  the  divine  car,  if  he  let  go  the  leather 
reins,  or  if  the  sedilis  has  blundered  by  a  single  word  or 
sacrificial-cup,  then  the  games  have  not  been  performed 
correctly  (rite}  and  these  mistakes  are  atoned  for  and  the 
minds  of  the  immortal  gods  are  appeased  by  repetition." 

2.  We  pass  on  to  sacrifices  and  (as  closely  bound  up 
therewith)  to  prayers  and  invocations.  Sacrum,  according 
to  Roman  antiquarians  (e.g.  JSlius  Gallus),  is  something 
set  apart,  and  declared  the  property  of,  or  exclusively 
meant  for,  the  gods.  No  private  person,  however,  can, 
strictly  speaking,  thus  set  apart,  or  consecrate :  such  re- 
quire the  official  regulation  or  approval  through  formal 
action  on  the  part  of  the  Pontifices.  Sacrificium  clearly  is 
an  act  by  which  something  is  removed  from  common  use 
and  set  apart  for  the  gods. 


352  TESTTMONIUM  ANBLE 

In  the  time  of  Augustus  substantially  all  ritual  terms 
connected  with  sacrifice  were  unintelligible  to  the  layman, 
non-recurrent  elsewhere  in  actual  life  and  often  puzzling 
as  to  their  etymology  to  the  most  learned  men  of  Rome. 

Ferctum  (Festus)  they  called  a  kind  of  cake  which  was 
borne  quite  frequently  to  sacrifices,  and  not  without  the 
strues,  another  kind  of  cake.  Crlomus  they  called  a  little 
piece  of  cake  at  sacrifices,  of  the  shape  of  a  boat,  fried  in 
oil.  Irenela,  a  kind  of  vessel.  Immolare  was  to  sprinkle 
the  victim  with  mola,  i.e.  ground  grain  and  salt,  and 
then  to  sacrifice  it.  The  wife  of  the  rex  sacrificulus,  the 
"  queen "  so  called,  while  sacrificing,  wore  on  her  head 
a  bent  slight  rod  of  the  pomegranate  tree.  Generally  the 
head  of  the  officiating  person  was  covered,  except  in  honor 
of  Saturn,  when  the  offering  priest  was  said  "  to  make 
light."  The  term  greatest  victim  was  bestowed  upon 
sheep  not  from  its  physical  eminence  among  victims,  but 
from  its  more  peaceful  disposition  (v.  Maxima™,  hostiam). 
In  the  large  temple  tables  held  the  place  of,  or  could  serve 
as,  altars.  The  JSdilis  had  three  victims  placed  for  his 
inspection,  and  chose  the  best  (y.  Optatam  hostiam). 

Secespita  they  called  a  knife  of  iron,  longish,  with  a 
handle  of  solid  round  ivory,  gold  and  silver  being  used 
for  binding  and  fastening,  with  bronze  nails  of  Cyprian 
bronze,  used  in  sacrificing  by  the  female  acolytes  of  the 
Flaminica  and  by  the  pontifices. 

But  this  may  suffice :  everything  was  rigidly  prescribed, 
and  innovation  here  was  considered  as  an  essential  im- 
possibility :  and  why  ?  Because,  as  a  man  cannot  undo 
his  descent  from  specific  ancestors,  so,  too,  the  mos  mai- 
orum  was  a  veritable  part  of  the  civil  and  political  con- 
sciousness bound  up  inextricably  with  the  religious  and 
ceremonial  institutions. 

This  rigor  and  rigidity  of  course  extended  to  prayer 
and  invocation  :  everything  was  in  formularies,  "  concepta 
verba,"  "indigitamenta."  Often  these  were  chanted  (v. 
Festus,  Indigitamenta}.  These  formulae  were  preserved 
under  the  care  of  the  standing  commissioners  for  all 
these  things,  the  pontifices.  I  cite  here  from  the  adrni- 


RITUAL  AND  WORSHIP  353 

rable  treatise  of  Wissowa  ("Religion  und  Kultus  der 
Romer"  p.  333)  :  "  For  prayer,  according  to  the  view 
of  the  Romans,  is  not  so  much  an  independent  act  of 
piety,  as  rather  the  oral  declaration  which  of  necessity 
must  go  with  every  religious  act  and  offering,  a  declara- 
tion which  renders  the  religious  legal  transaction  on  the 
part  of  the  mortal  perfect,  and,  if  uttered  in  the  cor- 
rect form,  compels  the  divinity  (called  upon)  to  take  an 
active  interest  in  the  matter.  And  the  first  point  es- 
sential is,  that  one  must  accost  the  divinity  with  the 
right  name,  and  the  lists  of  these  formularies  of  invoca- 
tion form  an  important  element  of  the  pontifical  archives; 
on  account  of  the  compelling  force  contained  in  a  prayer 
turning  to  the  god  with  the  correct  address,  the  com- 
monwealth had  to  shroud  these  formulas  of  invocation 
in  the  deepest  mystery,  lest  they  be  put  to  use  by  the  foe 
to  the  detriment  of  the  Roman  state." 

The  acts  of  worship,  provided  they  be  performed  with 
rigid  conformity,  will  operate :  the  mental  or  moral  state, 
nay  the  very  conscience  of  the  worshipper,  is  hardly  con- 
cerned at  all.  It  was  a  form  of  magic. 

And  so,  while  the  physical  and  political  welfare  of  the 
commonwealth  is  closely  bound  up  with  the  good-will,  let 
us  say  with  the  good  humor,  of  these  celestial  mechanisms, 
there  could  not  be  any  religion  beyond  the  narrow  limits 
of  the  commonwealth,  none  for  the  members  thereof. 

Gods  are  the  veritable  productions  of  a  given  com- 
monwealth, a  propaganda  or  missionary  fervor  is  quite 
impossible. 

The  state  could,  however,  induce  the  tutelary  divinities 
of  another  state  (with  which  Rome  was  struggling  maybe 
at  the  time)  to  leave  their  ancient  domicile  and  accept 
residence  among  the  Roman  people. 

This  was  evocatio,  calling  out.  The  inducement  offered 
was  an  even  more  generous  cult  in  the  new  abode.  Macro- 
bius  cites  the  exact  formula  ("  Saturnalia,"  3,  9,  7) :  "  If 
it  is  a  god  or  a  goddess  in  whose  guardianship  the  people 
and  commonwealth  of  Carthage  is,  and  thou  particularly, 
thou  who  hast  accepted  the  guardianship  of  this  city  and 

2A 


354  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

people,  I  pray  and  worship  and  seek  from  you  grace  that 
you  would  abandon  the  people  and  commonwealth  of  Car- 
thage, leave  the  sacred  places  and  temples  and  their  city 
and  go  away  from  these,  and  inspire  this  people  and  com- 
monwealth with  fear,  dread,  confusion,  and  having  gone 
forth  to  Rome  come  to  me  and  mine,  and  that  our  own 
sacred  places,  temples  and  city  may  be  more  acceptable  to 
you  and  more  approved  and  that  you  may  be  placed  over 
me  and  the  Roman  people  and  my  soldiers,  that  we  may 
know  and  realize.  If  you  shall  do  so,  I  vow  that  I  will 
make  temples  and  games  for  you."  It  was  an  act  of 
political  strategy. 

The  gradual  assimilation  to  —  the  partial  adoption  of  — 
form  and  matter  of  Greek  worship,  the  Grrcecus  ritus,  was 
not  in  any  way  a  spiritual  progression.  As  the  old  Latins 
were  entirely  guiltless  of  mythological  fancies  resembling 
those  of  the  Greeks,  so  even  they  had  for  a  long  time  no 
visible  palpable  images  and  idols  (Simulacra),  Varro  said, 
not  within  the  first  one  hundred  and  sixty  years  db  urbe 
condita;  it  was  the  son  of  the  Corinthian  exile,  the  fifth 
King  of  Rome,  who  came  from  Etruria,  the  elder  Tarquin, 
who  made  this  innovation  at  Rome. 

Later,  indeed,  the  Romans  with  great  facility  deified  ab- 
stractions :  or  is  it  not  perhaps  the  essence  of  a  cult  that 
was  never  burdened  with  genealogical  legends  of  definite 
spots,  rivers,  brooks,  oaks,  valleys,  as  was  the  so-called 
religion  of  the  Greeks?  Of  these  abstractions,  Fortuna 
was  perhaps  most  eminent.  In  time  there  were  added 
Hope  (Spes),  Concordia,  Pudicitia  (for  keeping  matrimony 
pure),  Pietas  (for  correct  relation  of  parents  and  children). 
The  persistent  experience  of  malaria  led  to  the  cult  of 
Febris;  storms  of  259  B.C.  suggested  the  worship  of  Tem- 
pestates.  The  unknown  divinity  which  caused  Hannibal's 
retiring  from  Rome  received  &fanum  and  was  worshipped 
as  Tutanus  Rediculus.  (Fides,  Terminus.} 

3.  A  word  as  to  Auspices  and  Augural  matters.  Above 
is  the  Lord  of  Light,  who,  somehow,  specifically  shelters 
and  befriends  the  Roman  commonwealth.  Divine  per- 
mission or  assent  is  ascertained  through  certain  magistrates 


RITUAL  AND  WORSHIP  355 

to  whom  this  "  Bird-viewing  "  (Avi8-spicere)  is  intrusted. 
Official  power  is  officially  associated  with  that  privilege  of 
looking  upward.  As  the  founders  of  the  state  constituted 
the  older  aristocracy,  they  long  maintained  this  form  of 
prrvilege.  Greatest  (Gellius,  13,  15,  4)  were  the  auspices 
of  consuls,  praetors,  censors.  These,  in  turn,  are  not  of  a 
parity.  A  qusestor  may  request  the  auspices  of  a  higher 
magistrate.  No  public  act  was  undertaken  without  this 
inquiry,  even  a  matter  of  routine  character  like  the  sum- 
moning of  the  senate,  appointment  of  magistrates,  march- 
ing forth  to  a  campaign.  The  very  name  of  templum 
means  first  "a  square  space  or  region  marked  out  in  the 
sky  or  on  the  earth  by  the  Augures,  in  which  to  look 
for  signs "  (Nettleship).  First  there  must  be  silence. 
In  Cicero's  time  the  whole  Augural  discipline  was  in  a 
decline  :  even  the  old  believers  seem  to  have  placed  more 
reliance  on  the  visceral  lore  of  the  Tuscan  experts.  Fac- 
ing south,  the  left  hand  was  the  sphere  of  favorable  signs. 

Even  the  most  enlightened  Romans,  e.g.  Cicero,  whose 
personal  culture  was  steeped  deep  in  Greek  reflection  and 
analytical  habits  —  even  he  takes  a  profoundly  conserva- 
tive view  of  the  vast  body  of  ancestral  usages  which  one 
may  call  the  Roman  Religion. 

The  very  continuation  of  the  commonwealth  was  bound 
up  in  the  mental  habits  of  the  people  with  the  strict  main- 
tenance of  ancestral  observance.  The  remnants  of  Cicero's 
"  De  Legibus  "  are,  if  I  may  say  so,  beautifully  suggestive 
and  illuminating  in  this  matter. 

The  household  must  endure  :  how  can  one  neglect  the 
usages  that  placate  the  tutelary  powers  of  the  household  ? 
And  the  state  is  but  an  enlarged  household.  See  Cic., 
" De  Legibus"  2,  19  :  " To  the  gods  they  shall  approach 
chastely,  they  shall  employ  reverence,  they  shall  put  away 
wealth.  He  who  does  otherwise,  the  god  himself  will  be 
the  avenger.  Privately,  no  one  shall  have  gods  neither 
new  nor  bought  from  abroad  unless  adopted  by  the  state 
(publice  adscitos').  .  .  .  The  rites  of  the  family  and  of 
the  fathers  they  shall  keep." 

"  The  gods  and  those  who  have  ever  been  held  heavenly, 


356  TESTIMOXIUM  ANBLE 

they  shall  worship,  and  those  whom  their  services  to  men 
have  placed  in  heaven,  Hercules,  Bacchus,  JEsculapius, 
Castor,  Pollux,  Quirinus  ;  but  those  things  on  account  of 
which  ascent  into  heaven  is  granted  to  a  human  being, 
viz.  Mens,  Virtus,  Pietas,  Fides,  and  for  their  praises 
there  shall  be  shrines,  and  not  any  for  Vices.  .  .  ." 
"  The  Vestal  Virgins  in  the  city  shall  guard  the  fire  of 
the  public  hearth  forever."  Traversing,  with  much  dig- 
nity and  with  a  quaint  archaic  manner  of  speech,  the 
whole  domain  of  Roman  observance,  Cicero  concludes 
with  these  words  :  "  The  rights  of  the  gods  of  the  de- 
parted spirits  shall  be  inviolate.  Those  who  have  been 
handed  over  to  the  realm  of  destruction,  they  shall  hold 
as  divine  ;  the  expenditure  bestowed  upon  them  and  the 
matter  of  mourning  they  shall  reduce." 

The  violation  of  the  Bona  Dea  through  the  rake  Clodius 
and  the  subsequent  purchase  of  the  Jury  with  the  active 
good- will  of  the  interested  and  injured  husband,  the  ponti- 
fex  himself,  —  all  this  shook  Cicero  profoundly  :  not  so 
much,  however,  was  it  his  moral  sense,  as  his  political 
consciousness  which  was  grieved  and  outraged. 

It  is  the  outward  faring  and  the  strength  of  the  state, 
its  flourishing  condition,  its  victories,  triumphs,  and 
tributes  imposed  upon  provinces  :  these  exhibit  to  the 
classical  consciousness  the  soundness  and,  if  I  may  say  so, 
the  solidity  of  their  cult  and  religion. 

A  few  years  after  Pompey  (on  a  Sabbath)  had  taken 
possession  of  Jerusalem,  Cicero  (in  58  B.C.)  delivered  his 
oration  "Pro  Flacco"  Cicero  praises  his  distinguished 
friend  Pompey  for  treating  the  temple  with  consideration. 
Of  the  Jews  themselves,  the  orator  speaks  with  unveiled 
contempt.  Of  their  religion  he  has  clearly  no  direct 
knowledge  ;  for  their  fate  as  a  people,  no  concern  ;  for 
their  temple,  no  respect.  He  goes  on  to  conclude  that 
particular  subject  with  sentiments  and  with  ideas  which 
go  to  the  heart  of  the  matter  :  "  Each  commonwealth " 
("Pro  Flacco"  69)  "has  its  own  religion,  we  have  our 
own.  Although  Jerusalem  is  standing,  and  although  the 
Jews  have  been  subdued,  nevertheless,  the  religion  of 


RITUAL  AND  WORSHIP  357 

those  rites  had  absolutely  nothing  in  common  with  the 
brightness  of  this  empire  of  ours,  with  the  impressive 
weight  of  our  name,  with  the  institutions  of  our  ancestors. 
At  the  present  moment  the  more  so,  because  that  race 
showed  by  its  military  performances  what  it  thought  of 
our  empire,  and  how  dear  it  was  to  the  immortal  gods,  it 
taught  through  the  fact  that  it  was  defeated ;  that  it  has 
its  tribute  let  out  to  publicans,  that  it  is  enslaved." 


In  the  circumvolution  of  years  and  centuries,  the  time 
came  when  the  sovereignty  of  the  Tiber  folk  began  to 
totter.  Neither  the  fervor  of  the  Neoplatonists  had  been 
able  to  check  the  decline  of  the  old  religion,  so-called,  nor 
had  the  fire  and  sword  of  Diocletian  rooted  out  the 
Christian  faith.  In  325  there  met  the  Council  of  Nice. 
In  330  Constantinople  was  dedicated,  the  other  Rome. 
In  the  following  year  Constantine  himself  celebrated  the 
thirtieth  anniversary  of  his  accession  by  dedicating  a 
church  in  Jerusalem.  In  337  that  emperor  died  near 
Nicomedia.  In  338  Athanasius  returned  from  exile. 

In  342  Constantius  IV  and  Constans  III  exempted 
from  destruction  certain  temples  within  the  walls,  with 
which  the  celebration  of  certain  games  and  other  anni- 
versaries was  connected. 

In  November,  355,  Julian  became  associate  emperor,  or 
"Caesar."  Only  a  single  slave  at  that  time  shared  the 
knowledge  of  his  secret  devotion  to  paganism.  In  360,  on 
Epiphany  Sunday,  this  emperor  still  attended  Christian 
service.  Near  the  close  of  361,  after  the  death  of  Con- 
stantius, he  threw  off  the  mask.  Visceral  lore  of  the 
Etruscans,  auspices,  and  Neoplatonism  were  curiously 
interfused  in  his  aspirations.  In  December,  361,  the 
Apostate  entered  Constantinople.  In  362  he  worshipped 
the  Phrygian  Great  Mother  at  Pessinus. 

One  of  his  coins  has  the  legend  :  "  Felicium  temporum 
Reparatio  "  (restoration  of  happy  times). 

In  the  winter,  362-363,  he  devoted  himself  at  Antioch 
to  polemics  against  Christianity.  As  the  pagan  Libanius 


358  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

puts  it  :  "  attacking  the  books  which  make  the  man  from 
Palestine  both  God  and  the  Son  of  God,  in  an  extensive 
combat  and  by  the  vigor  of  his  proofs  proving  their  alle- 
gations (TO,  \eydpeva)  ridicule  and  futility  and  he  dis- 
played finer  philosophy  therein  than  the  old  man  of  Tyre  " 
(Porphyrio).  In  the  summer  of  363,  campaigning  against 
the  Parthians,  Julian  perished. 

Thus  on  the  Euphrates,  while  north  and  northeast  of 
Italy,  Alemanni  and  Visigoths  began  to  break  down  the 
defence  of  those  frontiers,  Saxons  made  irruptions : 
Burgundians  were  besought  to  aid  the  empire.  The 
Quadi  ravaged  Illyricum.  On  the  lower  Danube,  in  374, 
the  Sarmatians  were  repulsed  by  Theodosius.  The  next 
spring  Valentinian  hastened  into  Carinthia  from  Treves 
on  the  Moselle,  to  defend  Illyricum.  He  died  in  this 
year.  Soon  after,  the  Goths,  pressed  by  the  Huns,  cross 
the  Danube  and  defeat  a  Roman  army. 

A  tribe  of  Alemanni  cross  the  Rhine.  The  Goths  are 
repulsed  from  Constantinople.  In  379  the  vigorous 
Theodosius  is  made  fellow-emperor  or  Augustus  by 
Gratian,  who  had  summoned  the  former  from  Spain. 

This,  too,  is  the  time  of  the  last  renaissance  of  Roman 
paganism.  Rome  had  come  to  be  a  venerable  memory: 
the  struggle  for  the  empire  was  carried  on  at  the  out- 
posts :  Milan  and  Ravenna,  Treves  and  Cologne,  Anti- 
och  and  Constantinople,  were  of  greater  moment  in  the 
movement  of  affairs  and  in  the  defence  of  the  power  once 
gained  by  pagan  legions. 

In  381  was  called  by  Theodosius  the  Council  of  Con- 
stantinople, Damasus  being  then  bishop  of  Rome,  to  deal 
with  the  heresy  of  Macedonius. 

Strong  were  the  imperial  decrees  against  heretics  and 
for  the  Nicene  creed. 


This  was  the  period  when  in  old  Rome  —  fed  mainly 
on  memories  and  inspired  by  the  superb  monuments  of  Ro- 
man sovereignty  and  power,  a  little  band,  whom  we  may 
call  The  Old  Believers,  sought  in  such  ways  as  were  open 


RITUAL  AND  WORSHIP  359 

to  them  to  reassert  or  defend  the  ancient  rites.  No  one 
threatened  their  lives  or  property.  They  clung  to  the 
old  ceremonial,  Vergil  their  Bible.  Macrobius,  Sym- 
machus,  Servius,  have  left  us  very  impressive  literary 
remains  of  the  movement.  Libraries  were  ransacked  for 
the  books  which  set  forth  the  olden  times  and  the  ancient 
rites.  Varro's  antiquities  had  a  last  period  of  flourishing 
authority.  In  384  A.D.,  Symmachus  himself,  their  most 
brilliant  champion,  held  the  conspicuous  office  of  prcefectus 
urbis.  And  it  seems  wise  at  this  point  to  transcribe  cer- 
tain claims  and  requests  of  the  Old  Believers  as  they  are 
revealed  in  an  official  report  of  Symmachus  :  it  is  true, 
advancement  was  impossible  if  one  were  conspicuous  at 
the  ancient  altars.  But  let  us  hear  the  Old  Believer 
himself  ("  Relatio"  III,  pp.  280  sqq.,  ed.  Seeck)  :  he 
petitions  Theodosius  for  the  retention  in  the  senate- 
hall  of  the  altar  of  Victory.  He  claims  to  defend  the 
established  usages  of  the  ancestors,  the  laws  and  fates  of 
Rome.  Did  not  Theodosius  himself  owe  much  to  Vic- 
tory ?  It  would  be  a  bad  omen  to  remove  the  altar. 
There  the  oath  of  loyalty  should  be  taken.  Would  not 
the  mind  shrink  from  perjury  at  such  a  spot  ? 

Constantius  is  cited.  But  he  did  not  cut  short  the  an- 
nual appropriations  for  the  support  of  the  Vestal  Virgins. 
He  followed  the  senate  through  all  the  roads  of  the 
Eternal  City  and  beheld  the  shrines  with  unruffled  coun- 
tenance, he  read  the  names  of  the  god  inscribed  in  the 
fastigia  of  temples,  he  inquired  about  the  origins  of 
temples,  and  while  himself  a  follower  of  other  religious 
convictions,  he  preserved  these  to  the  empire.  For  each 
one  has  his  own  custom,  his  own  rite :  the  mind  of  God 
has  allotted  various  cults  meant  to  be  guardians  of  various 
cities.  There  is  added  the  element  of  advantage  which 
particularly  attaches  men  to  God.  Symmachus  personifies 
and  cites  the  venerable  Roma  herself,  her  power,  her  long 
life,  her  sovereignty  in  the  world :  all  are  made  dependent 
on  the  ancestral  rites.  Rites  and  usages :  as  to  the 
deeper  and  the  underlying  causes  of  the  Universe,  this 
Old  Believer  professes  himself  ignorant :  "  We  gaze  at  the 


360  TESTBIOXIUM 

same  stars,  we  have  the  firmament  in  common,  the  same 
universe  holds  us  in  its  embrace :  what  difference  does  it 
make,  through  what  form  of  wisdom  each  seeks  the  truth  ? 
By  a  single  path  one  cannot  reach  so  great  a  mystery." 

He  goes  on  to  make  a  plea  for  the  recognition  (even 
without  any  appropriation)  of  the  Vestal  Virgins.  The 
fiscus  has  taken  their  lands.  Wills  are  denied  validity. 
The  old  Roman  religion  has  been  dealt  a  hard  blow  by  the 
Roman  law. 

The  stout  bishop  of  Milan,  Ambrosius,  protested  against 
this  recrudescence,  and  we  do  not  believe  that  Theodosius 
the  Great  gave  practical  heed  to  these  last  petitions  of  the 
Old  Believers.  The  ossified  externalities  of  a  ritual  en- 
tirely unconcerned  with  Sin  and  Soul  or  Immortal  Life  — 
these  indeed  were  as]  vague  and  vapory  shadows  on  the 
soil  of  that  Italy  on  which  St.  Ambrose  wrote  verses  that 
call  upon  all  men  and  to  all  time : 

JEterne  rerum  conditor  —  or 
Veni  Redemptor  gentium 


NOTE.  —  Among  the  most  available  books  for  these  matters  are : 
Cicero,  "  De  Divinatione."  Verrius  Flaccus,  "  De  Verborum  Signifi- 
catu,"  time  of  Augustus.  Ovid's  "  Fasti  "  unfortunately  go  but  from 
January  to  June.  The  year  is  as  a  revolving  ring :  annus  means  ring. 
The  same  revolving  unit  of  seasons  has  incorporated  an  accumulated 
multitude  of  observances  of  nature,  society,  historical  events  which 
kept  mirroring  the  experience  of  Roma.  But  even  for  the  most  ex- 
pert antiquarians  like  Varro  (116-132  B.C.)  the  majority  of  observ- 
ances were  teeming  with  problems.  This  multiplicity  of  explanations 
in  Ovid  points  to  Verrius  Flaccus,  who  in  turn  must  have  drawn 
from  Varro  more  heavily  than  the  slender  abstracts  now  extant 
allow  us  to  surmise.  As  for  Varro's  theories,  they  are  not  implied  in 
the  tradition,  are  not,  in  my  opinion,  drawn  from  it,  were  no  part  of 
it;  they  are,  it  seems  to  me,  Varro's  own.  The  classifications  and  the 
allegorizing  interpretations  point  to  the  Stoics.  Probably  Varro  was 
a  Stoic. 

Gellius  has  an  interest  not  only  in  old  words  but  in  old  institu- 
tions as  well.  Him  exploited  Macrobius,  one  of  the  Old  Believers  in 
the  time  of  Theodosius.  The  vast  masses  of  Varronian  data  im- 
bedded in  the  Servian  scholia  are  not  there  by  accident.  Symma- 
chus  —  Servius  —  Macrobius  —  there  is  in  this  clover-leaf  of  the  dusk 


RITUAL  AND  WORSHIP  361 

of  the  gods  a  rare  identity  of  religious  concern  as  well  as  antiquarian 
interest.  Varro  with  them  was  as  precious  a  record,  comparable  to  the 
Book  of  the  Law  rediscovered  in  the  reign  of  Josiah,  Kings  22,  10  sqq. 

The  Saturnalia  of  Macrobius  show  how  in  this  dusk  of  the  gods 
the  Old  Believers  drafted  into  their  service  a  vast  range  of  classical 
culture  —  in  which  Greek  figures  almost  as  fully  as  Latin. 

Upon  a  second  traversing  of  the  entire  range  of  the  Servian  matters, 
I  am  less  inclined  to  follow  Nettleship  than  at  first.  Neoplatonism 
in  that  generation  of  the  Old  Believers  was  not  a  loose  cloak  of  eru- 
dition, it  was  indeed  rather  a  creed,  nay  a  faith. 

Wissowa  began  these  studies  with  an  analysis  of  the  matter  out 
of  which  Macrobius  is  compounded.  The  antiquarian  purpose  of 
Vergil's  national  epic  must  not  be  overlooked.  See  his  letter  to 
Augustus  (Macrob.,  "Sat.,"  1,  24,  1).  Wissowa's  and  Preller's  foot- 
notes abundantly  furnish  all  the  material  necessary  for  closer  vision. 

The  transparency  of  the  Roman  deified  abstractions  is  simple  — 
but  the  deliberate  act  of  creating  an  institution  on  the  part  of  the 
commonwealth  has  nothing  in  common  with  the  postulate  of  uni- 
versal and  eternal  truth.  In  the  entire  domain  which  in  appropriat- 
ing a  familiar  phrase  we  may  call  the  dusk  of  the  gods,  it  is  my 
privilege  in  this  place  to  call  attention  to  Professor  Gildersleeve's 
"  Lucian,"  "  Apollonius  of  Tyana,"  and  "  The  Emperor  Julian,"  re- 
published  in  his  Essays  and  Studies,  1890.  To  these  must  be  added 
his  introduction  to  his  edition  of  Justin  Martyr.  In  the  critique  of 
young  Persius's  second  Satire,  Roman  religiosity  is  measured  by  the 
Stoic  consciousness,  if  not  the  Stoic  precept,  imbibed  by  the  pupil  and 
the  disciple  of  Annseus  Cornutus. 

Karl  Ottfried  Miiller's  "  Etrusker "  must  not  be  omitted  here. 
His  mortal  remains  are  bedded  in  the  deme  Kolonos.  He  was  the 
greatest  of  Boeckh's  pupils. 

Dr.  Ernst  Riess  of  New  York,  a  pupil  of  Usener,  has  devoted  much 
research  to  classic  superstitions  as  distinct  from  religious  usages. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

CICEEO  OF  ARPINUM.     CATO  OF  UTICA 

MARCUS  TULLIUS  CICERO  of  Arpinum  (106-43  B.C.) 
in  many  ways  is  the  best  known  of  the  sons  of  Latium. 
Most  maligned,  also.  For  after  he  and  his  graceful  essays, 
his  altogether  worthy  humanity  had  for  many  centuries 
educated  the  youth  of  Europe,  a  reaction  must  needs  come. 
You  tire  of  any  schoolmaster. 

And  still,  if  academic  and  scholastic  experience  should 
utterly  come  to  lose  sight  of  this  wonderful  man,  the 
larger  contemplation  of  ancient  things  could  not  dispense 
with  the  last  line  or  iota  of  his  literary  production.  He 
is  a  veritable  mirror  of  Roman  consciousness.  That  is,  of 
the  Roman  consciousness  of  the  declining  republic,  curi- 
ously permeated  with  Greek  culture;  a  consciousness 
comparable  to  the  twin  chestnuts  in  a  single  burr:  politi- 
cally he  was  proud  and  haughty  to  the  point  of  contempt- 
uous disdain:  culturally,  more  than  a  Philhellene:  Hu- 
manist before  the  Humanists  indeed:  and  so  deeply 
impregnated  with  Greek  that  the  innermost  notes  struck 
on  the  many  chords  of  his  mobile  and  sensitive  soul  found 
vent  in  phrase  or  verse  that  rang  again  from  Homer,  or 
Euripides,  or  other  Greek  source.  The  Romans  were 
bi-lingual  in  the  fullest  range  of  possession:  when  Greek 
scholars  came  to  Rome  they  taught  Greek  in  Greek  and 
in  no  other  way,  precisely  as  they  did  in  the  East.  Thus 
Tyrannic  the  elder,  pupil  of  Dionysios  Thrax,  although 
he  came  to  Italy  as  a  prisoner  of  war,  at  Rome  became 
wealthy  and  left  a  library  of  more  than  thirty  thousand 
scrolls  (Suidas). 

As  a  boy  Cicero  was  a  "  Wunderkind."  Penetration 
and  understanding  made  him  renowned  among  his  fellow- 

362 


CICERO  OF  ARPINUM.     CATO  OF  UTICA        363 

pupils  :  fathers  heard  so  much  of  it  from  their  sons  that 
they  visited  the  classes  to  hear  him  recite.  Even  when 
walking  home,  his  young  admirers  made  him  the  centre  of 
all  —  a  veritable  great  man  among  the  very  boys  (Plut., 


His  soul  was  of  the  positive  order,  ever  turning  to 
excellence  and  nobility,  enthralled  and  subjecting  itself 
with  a  certain  ecstasy  to  the  greatness  of  the  past,  partic- 
ularly in  utterance  and  thought  —  he  had  the  faculty,  as 
of  absorption,  so  of  swift  and  forceful  production.  Even 
as  a  boy  and  youth  his  own  genius  for  oratory  led  him  to 
choose  with  unerring  precision  for  models  the  most  emi- 
nent orators,  such  as  Crassus,  Antonius,  Gotta,  Sulpicius: 
and  his  was  the  rare  admixture  of  delicate  perception 
which  determined  the  secret  of  each  one's  peculiar  forensic 
power  by  the  agreement  of  friend  and  foe  ;  his  judgments 
on  his  rivals  or  other  orators  are  permeated  by  technical 
exactness  and  a  large  and  free  spirit  with  which  he  rec- 
ognized and  sketched  every  element  of  strength,  e.g.  in 
Hortensius  Hortalus.  And  so  he  became  that  virtuoso 
who  drew  tears  or  caused  the  ripple  of  smiles  to  run  over 
the  surface  of  the  souls  of  his  hearers,  at  will.  Not  less 
concerned  in  the  uttermost  detail  of  the  technique  of  his 
art  than  Aristotle,  Theophrastus,  or  Hermagoras,  he  alone 
among  the  Romans  was  chosen  by  Plutarch  to  furnish  a 
parallel  to  Demosthenes.  And  he  never  rested  on  his 
laurels,  but  ever  became  more  powerful  and  accom- 
plished. You  may  gaze  at  a  violin  once  used  by  a  Paganini 
or  Spohr  or  Joachim,  but  the  soul  and  feeling  that  drew 
the  bow  are  departed.  As  for  Cicero  himself,  his  own 
wonderful  delivery  and  all  the  powers  and  graces  bound 
up  therewith,  these  swayed  his  audiences,  as  Plutarch 
says  (c.  5).  At  the  same  time  he  made  it  his  life's  aim 
to  reunite  the  two  streams  which,  since  Plato  wrote  his 
"  Phsedrus,"  and  even  more  since  the  days  of  old  Isocrates 
and  young  Aristotle,  had  flowed  apart,  —  philosophy  and 
oratory.  Fortunate  for  us  modern  ones,  that  he  was  not 
addicted  to  one  school.  For  while  the  loftier  morality  of 
Stoicism  arrested  his  admiring  soul  from  boyhood  on  to 


364  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

the  end,  the  dialectic  free  fencing  and  avoidance  of  dog- 
matism as  maintained  by  the  New  Academy  impressed  him 
as  admirable  drill  for  his  pleader's  profession. 

Amid  all  the  Greek  technique  of  rhetoric  his  innermost 
soul  loved  to  lay  hold  of  general  truths  and  underlying 
verities.  In  the  elaboration  of  these  he  felt  himself  a 
philosopher  indeed. 

I  am  not  here  to  trace  once  more  the  chronicles  of  his 
achievements  and  his  successes,  but  most  earnestly  en- 
deavor to  reveal  his  spiritual  side.  And  for  this  aim  and 
interest  his  life  lies  before  us  cloven  —  cloven  in  twain, 
indeed,  by  his  exile.  Is  there,  at  all,  any  spiritual  side 
to  the  brilliant  pleader  and  debater,  before  the  exile? 

The  public  life  of  the  sovereign  commonwealth  of  the 
seven  hills  —  this  in  itself  was  full  of  incentives  that 
beckoned  the  brilliant  young  Arpinate  onward  to  climb 
from  rung  to  rung  in  the  offices  —  the  "cursus  honorum." 
The  mere  prosperity  of  life,  the  faring  well  in  it,  could 
not  satisfy  his  keen  and  craving  soul.  For  the  School  of 
Epicurus  which  he  understood  with  consummate  academic 
precision,  he  had  no  liking,  nay  he  confronted  it  with 
bristling  antipathy  to  the  end. 

Where  the  loveliness  of  Capri  and  Misenum  recalled  the 
Greek  legends  of  the  Sirens,  on  that  gulf  of  paradise,  he 
too  had  villas:  his  Pompeianum,  his  Puteolanum  (Cu- 
manum) ;  not  far  from  far-famed  Circeii  was  his  Formia- 
num;  Antium  was  well  furnished  with  books,  and  the 
news  of  the  near-by  capital  could  be  sifted  there  even  more 
satisfactorily  than  on  the  Forum;  at  Tusculum  he  felt  a 
kind  of  spiritual  vicinage  to  the  elder  Cato;  but  his  letters 
to  Atticus  reveal  him  a  chambered  nautilus  living  not  in 
iridescent  pearl  shell  of  self-praise,  but  in  transparent 
crystal,  —  these  letters,  I  say,  reveal  a  spirit  utterly 
elevated  above  the  silly  luxury  of  his  time,  his  concerns 
those  of  culture  and  ambition,  in  the  main.  The  noble 
memorials  of  Athens  are  very  dear  to  him:  his  library 
must  be  adorned  with  Hermathencs.  He  is  ever  on  the 
outlook  for  enlarging  his  collection  of  books  whether 
through  legacies  from  friends  or  through  direct  purchase. 


CICERO  OF  ARPINUM.    CATO  OF  UTICA        365 

Even  when  he  is  planning  to  enter  the  lists  for  the  consu- 
late (65-64),  his  brother  Quintus  calls  him  a  "  homo 
Platonicus  ":  a  man  imbued  with  that  dialectic  spirit  of 
carefully  turning  over  any  intellectual  concern. 

Intellectual  power,  professional  excellence,  unflagging 
industry,  had  carried  him  into  the  senate  chamber  :  thus 
his  virtus,  his  manifold  excellence,  had  overcome  his 
"  newness "  (novitas').  And  the  consciousness  that  his 
talents,  his  persevering  pursuit  of  eminence,  had  carried 
him  so  far,  did  not  contribute  any  element  of  humility  or 
even  of  wise  moderation. 

Glory  it  is  which  consoles  man  for  the  brevity  of  life: 
viz.  in  the  sense  of  anticipating  the  judgment  of  pos- 
terity: glory,  through  which,  though  gone,  we  are  pres- 
ent, though  dead,  we  are  living  (Milo,  97).  Glory  is 
the  praise  of  rightful  achievements,  of  all  rewards  be- 
stowed on  excellence,  the  largest  reward  is  glory:  Pindar 
again.  Philosophers  seek  glory  in  the  very  books  in 
which  they  discourse  on  the  contempt  of  glory:  an  ele- 
mental power  for  the  souls  of  humanity's  elite. 

As  the  outlook  of  the  soul  is  really  bounded  by  the 
limits  of  the  commonwealth,  so  all  boons  of  striving  and 
prizing  are  comprehended  therein.  "  Divine  and  Immor- 
tal," favorite  combination  of  his,  is  often  appended  to 
that  deity,  glory,  or  to  the  laudation  of  one  living. 

Hercules  on  the  pyre  of  (Eta,  Regulus  returning  to 
Carthage,  Rutilius  condemned  though  guiltless,  and  dis- 
daining to  return  to  Rome  when  he  could  —  these  are  in- 
carnations of  that  excellence  which  glory  follows  as  a 
shadow  follows  the  illumined  substance  of  a  thing. 

At  this  shrine  worshipped  the  brilliant  man  from 
Arpinum. 

"  For  the  rungs  in  the  ladder  of  high  office  are  equally 
open  to  the  highest  and  to  the  lowest :  but  those  leading 
to  glory  differ.  Who  of  us  would  dare  to  call  himself 
the  peer  of  M.  Curius,  of  C.  Fabricius,  of  C.  Duilius? 
Who,  of  A.  Atilius  Calatinus?  Who,  of  C.  and  P. 
Scipio  ?  Who,  of  Af  ricarius,  Marcellus,  Maximus  ?  Still 
we  have  attained  the  same  eminence  in  the  succession  of 


366  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

state-offices  as  they  did.  For  in  the  domain  of  Excellence 
(virtus')  there  are  many  ways  of  making  ascent,  so  that 
he  overtops  most  in  Glory  who  in  Excellence  is  most  con- 
spicuous :  the  consummation  of  the  offices  bestowed  by  the 
people  is  the  consulship,  which  magistracy  about  eight 
hundred  more  or  less  have  attained :  of  these,  if  you  will 
make  careful  inquiry,  you  will  find  that  hardly  the  tenth 
partis  worthy  of  glory"  ("Plane.,"  60). 

Now  Cicero,  when  he  was  a  candidate  for  this  high 
office  soon  after  the  completion  of  his  forty-second  year, 
was  in  a  peculiar  body  of  circumstance,  as  regards  his 
candidacy.  A  great  economic  crisis,  if  not  a  social  revo- 
lution, was,  if  not  imminent,  then  at  least  entirely  possi- 
ble. The  great  captain,  Pompey,  was  far  away  in  the 
East.  The  wealthy  classes  dreaded  the  electoral  success 
of  a  corrupt  and  desperate  aristocrat  such  as  Catiline  was ; 
Cicero's  detractors  and  belittlers  have  exerted  their  in- 
genuity to  cheapen  his  services  in  this  crisis.  But  at  the 
seat  of  government,  by  those  who  then  lived,  the  crisis 
was  conceived  as  a  grave  one  indeed.  Sallust  (who  wrote 
when  his  soul  had  turned  in  disgust  from  the  profligacy 
of  his  earlier  life)  paints  the  social  and  moral  situation  as 
well-nigh  desperate,  —  a  breaking  of  an  ulcer  which  had 
been  fed  by  the  widespread  putrescence  of  society  ;  sexual 
debauchery,  extravagance,  crazy  gluttony ;  a  fiendish  re- 
finement of  every  device  of  luxury ;  character  and  ideals 
widely  moribund. 

The  struggle  put  upon  Cicero  in  63  B.C.  truly  was  not 
merely  a  political  or  economic  one.  When  at  last  he  had 
forced  Catiline,  without  any  resorting  to  arms  or  ex- 
traordinary devices,  to  drop  the  mask  and  to  adopt  overt 
acts  of  preparing  war  against  the  government,  the  consul 
was  justly  jubilant.  And  when,  in  the  end  Catiline's 
chief  confederates  were  under  arrest,  while  no  drop  of 
blood  had  been  shed  in  the  capital,  his  sanguine  soul  was 
indeed  elated. 

Roman  annals  and  Roman  records  —  none  knew  them 
better  than  Cicero.  The  triumphal  car,  potentates  walk- 
ing humbly  before  it,  the  via  sacra  resounding  with  the 


CICERO  OF  ARPINUM.    CATO   OF  UTICA         367 

acclamations  of  the  mistress  of  the  world,  this  was  the 
felicity  of  being,  the  acme  of  existence.  But  his  glory, 
he  felt  it,  was  greater.  It  was  no  slight  matter  for  him- 
self and  all  his  future  that,  as  presiding  and  controlling 
magistrate,  on  December  5,  63,  he  championed  the  most 
radical  mode  of  disposing  of  the  conspirators  as  of  public 
enemies  who  had  placed  themselves  beyond  the  pale  of 
the  law. 

In  his  consciousness  and  to  the  end  of  his  life,  Decem- 
ber 5,  of  the  consulate  of  Cicero  and  Antony  was  the 
bright  star  which  never  set  and  which  no  conflict  with 
the  orbits  of  any  other  star  could  obscure  or  render  pale 
in  the  political  firmament.  This  text  of  glory  was  set  to 
an  anthem  which  he  was  never  weary  of  repeating  with 
endless  variations.  In  this  alluring  worship  where  the 
incense  to  his  ego  was  inextricably  mingled  with  lofty 
strains  of  genuine  patriotism  and  sound  principles  of  civic 
morality  —  I  say,  in  this  temple  and  ritual  he  was  never 
weary  of  being  the  chief  celebrant.  The  motion  of  Cato 
prevailed,  says  Sallust  ("  Bellum  Catil."  53),  but  the 
political  and  moral  burden  lay  on  the  shoulders  of  the 
consul  Cicero.  The  investors  and  capitalists  had  often 
employed  his  eminent  forensic  abilities,  but  on  that  day 
he  felt  himself  not  merely  as  the  champion  of  law  and 
property,  but  as  the  veritable  saviour  of  society,  the  in- 
carnation of  order,  worthy  of  being  named  not  merely 
with  the  greatest  captains  who  won  provinces  for  the  im- 
perial city,  but  with  the  founder  of  Rome  himself.  The 
soul  that  craved  honor  so  intensely  was  at  first  over- 
whelmed, though  your  ambitious  man,  like  your  miser, 
knows  not  what  satiety  is.  Crassus  himself,  the  richest 
man  in  Rome,  albeit  a  very  crooked  politician,  paid  his 
respects  to  the  pleader  from  Arpinum.  Catullus,  the 
primate  of  senators  in  a  fully  attended  senate,  called 
Cicero  Parens  Patrice;  the  temples  were  opened  for 
special  thanksgiving.  When  the  great  captain  returned 
from  his  eastern  campaigns,  he  embraced  Cicero  publicly 
and  declared  he  owed  it  to  Cicero  that  he  could  see  Rome 
once  more. 


368  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

It  is  not  my  task  or  is  it  worth  while  once  more  to  un- 
ravel the  political  game  through  which  Cicero  was  driven 
into  exile  in  the  spring  of  58.  By  Clodius,  debauchery 
incarnate  and  corruption  triumphant,  was  this  accom- 
plished. The  Triumvirs  allowed  it  to  come  to  pass. 
Cicero  had  declined  a  legatio  with  Caesar  in  Gaul,  likewise 
had  he  refused  a  place  as  one  of  the  twenty  commissioners 
under  Caesar's  agrarian  law. 

For  hero-worshippers  —  the  author  is  none  —  poor  Cic- 
ero's letters  from  his  exile  in  Thessalonica  are  truly  sad 
reading.  His  friend  the  great  Captain,  to  whose  Afri- 
canus  he  would  play  Lselius  on  the  political  stage  —  Rome 
to  be  doubly  buttressed  by  military  genius  and  by  philos- 
ophy and  conservative  eloquence  —  Pompey,  I  say,  had 
played  him  false.  His  family  ties  rudely  rent  asunder, 
his  mansion  on  the  Palatine  demolished,  his  private  for- 
tune well-nigh  ruined,  the  bitterest  thought  was  this,  that 
Rome  had  curtly  cast  adrift  her  very  saviour — his  agony 
was  no  common  one.  His  glory  he  had,  but  clearly  it 
had  not  saved  him.  His  sense  of  vicarious  sacrifice  he 
had ;  but  his  heart  was  embittered  at  the  cold  selfishness 
of  the  aristocracy  he  had  once  saved  and  who  now  were 
unconcerned  at  his  sufferings,  if  only  they  could  keep 
mullet  in  their  fish-ponds  on  their  estates.  The  iron  had 
entered  his  soul. 


Cicero  came  back  Cicero  :  but  a  saner,  a  graver  soul. 
His  great  gifts,  indeed,  he  felt  could  never  more  have  free 
play  in  the  senate  chamber,  or  on  the  Forum.  A  bitter 
tone  is  blended  with  his  social  and  civic  pride  in  his  ora- 
tions. The  senate  rebuilt  his  mansion  and  in  a  measure 
rehabilitated  his  private  fortune.  But  Cicero,  as  far  as 
he  dared,  gave  vent,  too,  to  his  hatred  for  those  whom  he 
chiefly  charged  with  his  misery,  e.g.  the  consul  Pisp  (of 
58  B.C.),  Ca3sar's  own  father-in-law.  Even  in  54  B.C., 
after  Ca3sar  had  crossed  the  Rhine  and  full  three  years 
after  his  own  return  from  exile,  Cicero  both  uttered  and 
published  his  "  Pisoniana " ;  he  called  him  "  dog  of 


CICERO  OF  ARPINUM.    CATO  OF  UTICA        369 

Clodius,"  "  man  of  clay,"  "  a  foul  freak  of  nature,"  "  a  new 
Epicurus  led  forth  from  the  sty." 

But  when  Csesar  crossed  the  Rubicon,  there  came  to  the 
mobile  soul  of  Cicero  even  a  more  overwhelming  misery. 
Personal  loyalty  and  a  very  high  sense  of  chivalry  induced 
him  to  follow  the  declining  star  of  Pompey,  in  whose 
judgment  and  tact  he  had  no  confidence  any  more.  Am- 
nestied by  his  literary  friend  Csesar,  he  now  determined 
to  devote  his  declining  days  to  wisdom  and  the  spreading 
of  Greek  philosophy  among  his  countrymen. 

When  Cato  refused  to  submit  to  the  autocrat,  Cato's 
admiring  friend  Cicero  published  that  eulogy  which  nettled 
Csesar  to  make  reply  by  his  "Anticatones." 

Cicero's  philosophical  books :  again  I  say,  the  world 
owes  him  thanks  that  he  has  Latinized  so  large  a  body  of 
Greek  thought :  Theory  of  understanding,  Ethics,  Politi- 
cal Philosophy,  Speculation  of  the  Greek  world  as  to  the 
Divine,  theory  of  Mantic  art :  responses  to  the  young 
Atticists  in  Roman  oratory  —  no  bran  and  clayey  porridge 
of  brutal  pleasure-pursuits  for  him  (as  in  Catullus),  no 
futilities  even  of  archseological  or  sesthetical  palavering 
here. 

The  noblest  revelations  of  his  soul  were  recorded  toward 
the  end.  When  his  darling  daughter  was  taken  away  in 
45  B.C.,  he  talked  to  his  friend  Atticus  about  a  shrine  or 
fane  to  her  memory.  Csesar,  Brutus,  Sulpicius,  and  other 
foremost  men  wrote  to  him,  to  console  him.  But  his  pen 
was  his  chief  consolation,  —  the  ritual  of  the  state  religion 
was  bare  and  cold,  a  product  of  Rome  as  we  have  seen  : 
Cicero  descended  into  his  own  soul  and  by  reproducing 
the  best  available  in  Greek  philosophical  production,  he 
soothed  himself.  His  introductory  appeal  and  defence  of 
philosophy,  his  "  Hortensius,"  more  than  four  centuries 
afterwards,  powerfully  affected  a  youth  destined  to  be  no 
common  man,  young  Augustine,  in  his  nineteenth  year. 
Says  St.  Augustine,  "  Confessions,"  3,  4  :  "  In  the  estab- 
lished succession  of  studies  I  had  come  to  a  certain  book  of 
a  certain  Cicero.  That  book  contains  his  own  exhortation 
to  the  pursuit  of  wisdom  and  is  called  '  Hortensius.'  That 

2B 


370  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

book  indeed  changed  my  aspirations.  Cheapened  for  me 
suddenly  was  all  hope  of  vanities,  and  I  craved  the  im- 
mortality of  wisdom  with  an  incredible  fervor  of  my  heart. 
For  not  towards  the  sharpening  of  my  tongue  did  I  apply 
that  book,  nor  had  it  urged  upon  my  acceptance  mere 
phrase,  but  that  which  was  the  object  of  its  utterance. 
And  I  at  that  time  was  being  delighted  in  that  appeal  by 
this  alone,  that  I  did  esteem  not  this  school  or  that  school, 
but  Wisdom  itself,  whatever  it  was,  and  sought  it  and 
pursued  it  and  held  it  and  bravely  clasped  it  to  my  heart 
...  to  do  this  was  I  roused  by  that  discourse  and  kindled 
and  was  set  on  fire." 

This  prolific  period  of  production  was  broken  —  to  him 
broken  as  by  a  sudden  gleam  of  lightning,  when  the  auto- 
crat perished  at  the  foot  of  Pompey's  statue. 

But  Cicero's  sanguine  hopes  for  the  old  order  were 
rudely  shattered  by  the  acts  of  the  consul  Antony,  who 
would  enter  into  the  inheritance  of  the  powerful  man  that 
made  him. 

Cicero's  aversion  for  Mark  Antony  was  deeper  than  the 
gloom  of  the  political  circumstances;  it  was  the  same 
aversion  which  he  had  nurtured  for  Catiline  and  all  his 
works,  for  the  debauchee  Clodius,  for  all  who  treated  con- 
victions and  ideals  cheaply. 

He  dared  not  return  to  the  senate  chamber,  but  flitted 
from  villa  to  villa,  his  political  glance  ever  directed  to  the 
Seven  Hills,  while  his  moral  and  intellectual  being  was  ab- 
sorbed in  production :  mainly  in  philosophical  writing.  His 
"  Second  Philippic  "  would  he  write,  staking  life  or  death 
upon  the  result.  At  the  same  time  did  he  Latinize  Panai- 
tios  the  Stoic's  work  on  "Duties." 

It  is  a  delightful  pursuit  to  trace  his  own  personal  con- 
tributions here  —  his  life  clearly  spent,  his  hope  of  the  old 
order  flown  —  his  family  circle  destroyed:  it  was  a  rare 
soul  that  could  occupy  itself  thus,  at  such  a  time.  And 
the  Stoic  conception  of  Duty  was  categorical  —  that  action 
of  which  a  demonstration  can  be  made  compelling  assent 
from  all  rational  beings,  within  the  spheres  of  the  Four 
Great  Canonic  Virtues,  viz.  Justice  or  Righteousness, 


CICERO  OF  ARPINUM.    CATO  OF  UTICA        371 

Fortitude,  LoveVf  Truth,  or  Wisdom,  Self-control  (Tem- 
perance, Continence). 

How  sternly  did  then  collide  this  definition  of  Justice 
with  the  avid  ambition  recently  destroyed  but  having  its 
palingenesis  in  Antony.  "  This  was  made  manifest  but  a 
short  while  ago  by  the  recklessness  of  C.  Caesar,  who  over- 
turned all  divine  and  human  laws  for  the  sake  of  that 
leadership  which  he  had  moulded  for  himself  by  a  perver- 
sion of  supposition"  ("Off.,"  1,  26). 

Time  had  sifted  many  things  for  him  —  mere  prosperity 
—  the  riding  on  the  crest  of  the  political  billow,  all  these 
things  had  come  to  be  (to  the  deeper  musings  of  his  soul) 
as  vain  and  nugatory :  the  allurements  of  ambition,  the 
unrighteousness  so  often  bound  up  with  it,  had  sunk  deeply 
into  his  soul. 

He  is  fully  aware,  at  the  same  time,  that  the  mere 
philosopher  pursuing  the  contemplative  life,  is  largely 
beyond  crisis,  peril,  nay  beyond  temptation  even:  Right- 
eousness in  action  ("  Off.,"  1,  73)  is  greater  than  mere 
correctness  of  moral  judgment  projected  at  the  moving 
world  of  men  from  the  peaceful  study. 

It  remains  for  us  in  this  sketch  to  inquire  as  to  Cicero's 
concern  in  death  and  the  fate  of  the  soul. 

At  fifty-three,  under  the  Triumvirs,  Cicero  wrote  his 
"  Theory  of  Politics,"  his  De  Republic^  treading  in  the 
footsteps  of  Plato ;  this,  too,  in  a  vision  or  dream  given  to 
his  political  ideal,  Scipio  ^Emilianus.  Soul  of  the  past 
reveals  itself  to  the  latter :  to  wit,  the  elder  Africanus. 
The  heaven  there  depicted  is  an  abode  of  great  statesmen  : 
essentially  a  heaven  of  the  Roman  commonwealth :  these 
worthies  there  live  in  bliss  f orevermore.  Paulus,  too,  lives 
there,  the  conqueror  of  Macedon  :  their  blissful  souls  have 
escaped  from  the  shackles  of  the  body  as  though  from  a 
dungeon.  Cicero  follows  the  guidance  of  Plato  in  many 
details :  no  cutting  short  of  life :  patience  !  Celestial 
substance  drawn  from  stars,  food  of  immortality ;  milky 
way :  the  spheres  and  orbits  and  their  harmony  not  per- 
ceived here  below.  Human  glory,  mere  terrestrial  renown, 
is  limited  by  narrow  boundaries.  Likewise  it  lasts  not 


372  TESTIMOXIUM  ANDLE 

long.  And  even  if  it  did,  cosmic  catastrophes  destroy  all 
annals.  Let  the  soul  of  true  ambition  look  beyond  these 
things  to  the  ideal  of  Virtue  itself.  The  soul  is  made  of 
immortal  stuff — and  so  our  Arpinatian  spins  out  the 
substance  of  Phsedo  and  Platonic  Republic.  A  vision  or 
flight  guided  by  the  Attic  philosopher. 

Later,  when  Pompey  was  dead  and  the  countenance  of 
the  political  world  had  become  a  very  desolation  to  our 
friend,  after  the  bloody  field  of  Munda,  he  wrought  his 
Tusculan  Disputations.  In  it  there  is  much  of  Death.  Is 
Death  an  evil  ?  Not  if  we  will  be  gods  or  in  the  company 
of  gods  (1,  76).  Men  at  large  hold  Death  an  evil,  and  in 
the  prospect  thereof  they  are  wretched.  But  what  is 
Death?  Cicero  rejects  the  extinction- theory  of  Epicurus 

—  he  is  not  much  attracted  by  the  greater  ductility  and 
extension  of  soul-substance  held  by  Stoics.      He   scans 
monism,  Aristotelian  theory  of  elemental  Reason,  atomism 
of  Democritus.     He  confesses  to  a  certain  anticipation  of 

—  historical  immortality,  rejects  Acheron tian  fictions,  but 
argues  with  great  earnestness  against  the  utter-extinction 
theories  of  ancient  materialists. 

The  relation  of  body  and  soul  is  a  problem  full  of  pro- 
found perplexity.  He  clearly  is  most  in  sympathy  with 
Plato's  thought,  and  with  Pythagoras.  Homer's  anthropo- 
morphism of  divinity  he  utterly  rejects. 

The  grand  system  of  cosmic  order  seems  to  (§  70)  point 
to  a  mighty  accomplishing  Intelligence.  The  Soul  seems 
to  him  to  be  in  its  essence  non-material  and  non-com- 
posite. 

It  is  not  then  the  religious  consciousness  which  is  con- 
cerned with  death  for  him,  but  rather  the  civic  and  political: 
so  he  wrote,  not  long  before  the  catastrophe  of  Caesar's  death 
("Tuscul.,"  1,109):  "But  assuredly  death  then  is  con- 
fronted with  a  spirit  of  greatest  equipoise  when  the  sunset 
of  life  can  console  itself  with  its  own  praises.  No  one 
has  lived  too  briefly  who  has  discharged  the  full- wrought 
task  of  full-wrought  excellence.  Man 3^  things  (in  my  own 
career)  pointed  to  death  as  a  seasonable  consummation. 
For  nothing  could  there  be  superadded;  heaped  up  was  the 


CICERO  OF  ARPINUM.    CATO  OF  UTICA        373 

measure  in  which  reposed  the  duties  of  Life ;  the  remnant 
were  campaigns  with  Fortune.  Therefore,  if  sheer  dia- 
lectic process  will  fail  to  enable  us  to  make  nothing  of 
death,  still  let  my  actual  career  help  to  it  that  I  may  seem 
to  have  lived  enough  and  beyond  that.  For  although  con- 
sciousness shall  pass  away,  still  the  dead,  although  they 
have  no  consciousness,  do  not  lack  their  own  and  their 
specific  boons,  viz.  praise  and  glory.  For  although  it 
have  not  in  itself  any  cause  for  seeking  it,  still  it  follows 
excellence  (virtus)  like  its  shadow." 

Before  closing  this  sketch  let  us  glance  at  the  conclusion 
of  his  "  Essay  on  Old  Age,"  Summer  44.  It  is  wonderful, 
this  exquisite  defence  of  Old  Age :  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
such  work  helped  him  to  endure  living:  as  a  matter  of 
psychological  experience,  he  realized  the  increasing  bitter- 
ness of  Old  Age  ("Attic.,"  14,  21,  1).  Into  the  mouth 
of  Old  Cato  Cicero  puts  these  words  : 

"  But  (82)  somehow  my  soul  rousing  itself  to  its  full 
stature  was  wont  always  to  look  forward  to  posterity,  as 
though,  when  it  had  departed  from  life,  then  only  it  was 
to  live  indeed."  He  looks  forward  to  that  ultraterrestrial 
union  or  reunion  with  the  great  souls  of  Roman  annals. 
"  I  am  not  inclined  to  bewail  life,  which  many  men  and 
scholars  too  have  done,  nor  do  I  regret  having  lived,  since 
I  have  lived  in  such  a  way  as  to  believe  I  have  not  been 
born  in  vain,  and  from  life  I  depart  as  from  an  abode  where  I 
have  been  merely  a  guest,  not  as  from  a  home ;  for  nature 
has  given  us  merely  an  inn  for  tarrying  awhile,  not  for 
making  our  domicile  therein"  (84). 


Not  far  from  Antium  is  Astura  by  the  Sea.  Thence  in 
December,  43,  the  orator  sailed  for  the  South,  fleeing  from 
Antony.  But  he  landed  at  Circeii  and  thence  passed  to 
his  villa  near  Caieta,  his  Formianum.  There  he  spent  the 
last  night  of  his  life.  In  the  morning  they  carried  him  in 
a  litter  towards  the  sea.  A  Greek  freedman  of  brother 
Quintus,  they  say,  betrayed  his  course  to  the  murderers,  who 
craved  the  gold  of  Antony.  When  Cicero  heard  the 


374  TESTIMONIUM  ANIALE 

hurrying  footsteps  of  the  pursuing  Herennius,  Cicero  bade 
his  slaves  set  down  the  litter.  He  himself,  as  was  his 
wont  in  reflection,  propping  his  chin  with  his  left  hand, 
firmly  fixing  his  glance  on  his  murderers,  awaited  the  fatal 
stroke,  his  tousled  gray  locks  unkempt,  his  countenance 
furrowed  and  shrivelled  from  these  ultimate  cares. 


It  is  easy  and  convenient  to  dispose  of  great  movements 
in  human  history  by  the  employment  of  universal  and 
sweeping  judgments,  as  when  the  housemaid  sweeps  all 
crumbs  from  the  tablecloth  with  a  few  simple  movements 
of  the  whisk-brush.  Thus  the  unconcern  of  the  Romans 
for  truth  —  your  wretched  Pontius  Pilate  as  the  true  type 
of  it  all:  the  chevalier  Bunsen  has  written  a  few  vigorous 
and  impressive  periods  to  this  effect:  Ritschl  has  cited 
them  to  save  a  little  of  Cicero's  prestige  from  Mommsen's 
pen.  But  there  was  in  the  generation  of  Cicero  a  greater 
one  than  he.  For  not  these  things  which  are  notable  to 
the  academic  person's  concern,  comprehend  greatness  ex- 
clusively: Socrates  wrote  nothing  for  us:  of  the  younger 
Cato  we  have  hardly  a  line  directly:  but  we  have  the  most 
precious  thing  transmitted  by  history,  a  great  character. 
Mommsen's  epigrams  impressed  me  in  my  youth.  They  do 
so  no  more.  To  the  gaping  multitude,  indeed,  abusive 
judgments  appear  more  true,  accordingly  as  they  are 
brought  forward  with  a  certain  epigrammatic  cleverness. 
To  a  very  great  number  of  people  Mommsen  has  long  been 
a  kind  of  hierophant  of  historical  valuation  and  re  valuation. 
Odd,  too,  these  glorifications  of  incipient  monarchy  from 
a  man  who  was  an  ardent  Liberal  in  1848,  and  who,  later 
on,  as  a  scholar  in  politics  has  not  been  very  impressive  to 
the  real  statesmen  of  his  generation. 

But  to  return  to  the  greater  subject  of  Cato  of  Utica. 
In  him  was  a  temperament,  even  when  he  was  a  child  of  four, 
the  opposite  of  all  that  was  pliable,  his  decision  of  doing 
or  enduring  not  to  be  swayed  or  determined  by  pleasure 
or  pain,  by  profit  or  loss.  As  a  little  boy  of  four  he  was  re- 
siding with  his  uncle  Livius  Drusus,  who  sought  to  stay 


CICERO  OF  ARPINUM.    CATO  OF  UTICA        375 

the  disruption  of  the  political  fabric  by  trenchant  com- 
promises. Then  the  Italian  allies  were  impatiently  de- 
manding political  equality  with  Rome.  One  of  the  Italian 
leaders  was  Pompsedius  Silo.  This  man  was  at  the  mansion 
of  Livius  Drusus,  making  interest  for  his  policies,  a  guest. 
He  requested  the  little  lad,  in  a  playful  manner,  to  inter- 
cede with  little  Cato's  uncle.  But  the  child  would  not 
give  utterance.  Finally  the  Italian  guest  grasped  the 
little  one  and  held  him  out  of  a  window — it  was  an  upper 
chamber  where  the  company  was — and  threatened  the  boy 
with  a  rough  voice.  But  the  child  remained  firm  and  un- 
shaken. About  ten  years  further  on  the  boy  of  fourteen 
years  (81  B.C.)  was  notable  among  the  striplings  of  the 
aristocracy  —  his  remarkable  determination  and  simplicity 
of  character  giving  him  leadership  in  the  competitions  of 
noblemen's  sons.  The  dictator  Sulla  often  invited  him  to 
his  palace.  It  was  in  that  terrible  time  of  82-81  B.C., 
when  Sulla  was  dictator  for  settling  the  government.  Men 
were  led  away  to  execution  continually.  Others  were 
tortured.  Gold  was  paid  out  for  the  heads  of  those  who 
had  been  proscribed  by  the  autocrat.  Many  heads,  too, 
were  borne  away.  People  sighed.  But  the  lad  Cato 
spoke  impulsively  to  his  Greek  paidagogos  (boy-escort) 
Sarpedon:  "Why  do  you  not  give  me  a  sword  that  I 
despatch  him  and  free  our  country  from  slavery?"  His 
half-brother  Servilius  Csepio  he  loved  with  passionate 
fervor,  and  as  he  grew  older  held  him  as  a  very  witness  of 
his  days  and  of  his  nights.  Early  he  studied  the  Ethics 
of  the  Stoa  under  Antipater  of  Tyre,  and  his  life  was,  for 
those  times,  a  very  simple  life.  He  comprehended  slowly, 
but  held  with  wonderful  tenacity. 

His  earliest  appearance  in  public  discourse  was  in  de- 
fence of  a  certain  column  in  the  Porcian  colonnade,  public 
gift  of  his  great  ancestor  the  Censor.  There  was  nothing 
sophomoric  in  that  discourse.  The  trend  of  his  thought 
or  argument  was  brusque,  but  there  was  something  win- 
ning and  leading  his  hearers,  says  Plutarch.  We  may 
fairly  assume  that  it  was  a  tremendous  earnestness  coupled 
with  overwhelming  evidence  of  absolute  and  unqualified 


376  TEST1MONIUM  ANBLE 

sincerity.  Right  and  righteousness  were  his  goal :  he 
strove  for  action  deeply  thought  out  and  approved  to  his 
conscience,  action  categorical  and  buttressed  by  motives 
unimpeachable  before  the  forum  of  universal  reason.  Thus 
as  one  of  the  commissioners  for  the  treasury  (quaestor)  his 
way  of  doing  everything  was  entirely  his  own.  First  he 
studied  with  unflagging  industry  all  statutes  bearing  on 
the  administration  of  the  treasury.  He  made  himself  in- 
dependent of  the  treasury  clerks  and  their  traditions  of 
favor  or  indulgence  or  red  tape.  He  opposed  even  the 
censor  Catullus  in  hewing  close  to  the  line.  Justice  was 
done  and  order  was  created  in  all  obligations,  claims,  or 
arrears.  He  utterly  refused  to  allow  personal  considera- 
tions to  prevail  anywhere.  And  still  he  lived  in  a  society 
sapped  through  luxury,  permeated  with  corruption :  its 
political  life  in  a  trend  of  movement  alluring  to  consum- 
mate powers  if  coupled  with  unscrupulous  ambition  and 
playing  with  hollow  shells  of  traditional  forms.  Spotless 
of  personal  purity,  he  was  to  see  the  prevailing  corruption 
of  morals  in  those  nearest  to  him  by  blood  or  marriage. 
His  power  in  public  life,  with  all  these  things,  rose  steadily. 
There  is  a  prestige  in  consistent  righteousness  amid  the 
dust  and  heat  of  action,  far  transcending  the  consistency 
of  academic  formularies  or  the  postulates  of  the  pen. 

When,  on  December  5,  in  the  year  63  before  Christ, 
the  senate  was  determining  the  fate  of  the  Catilinarian  con- 
spirators, the  timid  and  nervous  Cicero  presiding,  the  real 
champions  on  that  occasion  were  Caesar  and  Cato.  Cato 
tribune  elect,  but  thirty-two  "years  old.  Caesar,  a  consum- 
mate corruptionist  and  successful  politician,  adroit  in  dis- 
covering the  exact  spot  in  a  man's  moral  structure,  in  his 
temperament,  or  in  his  vices  where  he  could  use  him,  a 
man  on  the  verge  of  personal  bankruptcy  in  playing  the 
game  of  politics,  a  kindly  broker  in  removing  feuds  of 
rivals,  always  willing  to  be  generous  rather  than  threaten, 
a  man  who  had  learned  lessons  from  Sulla's  career,  an 
Epicurean  in  life  and  theory,  a  man  who  ever  subordinated 
moral  law  to  political  ambition,  a  man  too  refined  in  his 
faculties  and  culture  to  be  content  with  a  Catilinarian 


CICERO  OF  ARPINUM.    CATO  OF  UTICA         377 

career  for  himself,  a  man  whose  friends  were  made  rich 
through  their  loyalty,  a  man  who  has  been  endowed  by  his 
flatterers  with  superhuman  excellencies,  but  a  man  who 
perished  in  the  end  because  he  was  drunk  with  sweet  for- 
tune, and  because  his  judgment  had  become  numbed  and 
warped  in  focussing  itself  on  the  venalities  of  his  world  and 
underestimating  the  tough  fabric  of  Roman  tradition. 
Cicero  knew  his  finer  and  his  more  generous  side  much 
better  than  we  do  —  Cicero,  as  a  judge  and  critic  of  noble 
things  anywhere,  is  without  a  peer  in  his  generation  —  Cic- 
ero, I  say,  has  left  us  a  memorable  survey  of  Caesar's  career, 
a  delineation  which  he  wrote  in  the  autumn  of  44  B.C., 
after  Caesar's  death.  Then,  too,  the  coarser  fabric  of 
Antony  was  a  foil  for  Caesar's  noble  elements.  Of  Caesar, 
then,  Cicero  wrote  thus  (second  Philippic,  116)  :  "  That 
man  possessed  genius,  the  faculty  of  reasoning,  memory, 
literary  culture,  care,  reflection,  he  could  take  pains  :  his 
achievements  in  war,  though  disastrous  to  the  common- 
wealth, were  nevertheless  great ;  for  many  years  had  he 
planned  for  autocratic  power,  with  great  toil,  with  many 
dangers  had  he  accomplished  what  he  had  been  making 
the  burden  of  his  thoughts:  with  bounties,  and  shows, 
with  monumental  structures,  with  donatives  of  food,  had 
he  charmed  the  ignorant  multitude :  his  own  adherents  he 
had  attached  to  himself  by  rewards,  his  opponents  by  the 
guise  of  clemency.  Why  make  many  words  about  it? 
He  had  foisted  upon  a  republic  partly  through  fear,  partly 
through  patience  on  the  people's  part,  the  habit  of  servi- 
tude." On  the  fateful  morning  of  the  Ides  of  March  the 
dictator's  faithful  wife  had  consulted  the  haruspices  to 
prevent  her  husband's  going  forth  to  public  business:  Cleo- 
patra, however,  was  in  Rome  also.  She  was  the  mother  of 
Caesar's  son  Caesario.  But  to  return  to  the  memorable 
scene  in  the  senate,  December  5,  63.  Caesar  was  then  the 
visible  and  actual  head  of  the  popular  or  democratic  party  in 
the  state,  the  successor  of  his  father-in-law  Cornelius  Cinna. 
In  this  grave  crisis  the  consul  Cicero  had  firmly  refused  to 
recognize  any  informer  or  information  aimed  against  Caesar. 
Policy  and  personal  penetration  united  in  the  latter  to 


378  TESTIMONIUM  ANIM^l 

make  him  stand  out  against  summary  execution  of  the  self- 
confessed  culprits.  In  the  choice  of  action  emotional  preju- 
dice or  passion  was  generally  absent  from  his  soul.  His 
stand  was  really  a  constitutional  regard  for  precedent. 
For  him,  too  (Sallust,  "  Catiline,"  51),  death  was  termina- 
tion of  all  things  —  beyond  it  there  was  no  place  for  either 
joy  or  concern.  Ceesar  had  read  the  lessons  of  history  — 
Roman  and  Greek  too,  his  clear  and  powerful  mind  had 
pondered :  he  could  reason  forward,  also. 

The  speech  of  the  young  Stoic  in  reply  is,  if  anything, 
still  more  authentic  in  the  tradition,  for  the  consul  Cicero 
with  great  wisdom  had  it  taken  down  on  the  spot  by  a 
number  of  scribes  who  were  trained  in  the  new  skill  of 
shorthand  notation  of  parliamentary  utterance. 

Cato  warned  those  senators  who  had  prized  their  luxury 
above  all,  whose  prime  concerns  of  life  were  villas,  man- 
sions in  town,  sculpture,  painting  —  the  existence  of  the 
commonwealth  itself  was  at  stake.  Cato  pointed  to  his 
record  in  that  august  assembly :  he  had  consistently 
attacked  covetousness  and  luxury  there:  many  personal 
enemies  had  he  thus  made  for  himself.  He  had  been  con- 
sistently rigorous  in  his  own  conduct :  he  was  not  willing 
to  be  more  lax  in  dealing  with  his  fellow-men.  The 
decadence  of  living  and  conduct  had  debased  the  very 
speech  of  Rome,  when  it  was  called  liberal  to  corrupt 
others  with  property  not  one's  own,  when  boldness  in 
entering  upon  evil  courses  was  dubbed  fortitude.  There 
was  a  pity  towards  criminals  which  was  really  cruelty 
towards  life  and  property  of  better  citizens. 

To  the  standard  and  judgment  of  the  young  Stoic 
statesman  both  public  and  private  morality  were  objects 
of  sweeping  censure  —  no  prophet  of  Israel  could  have 
more  earnestly  inveighed  against  the  sins  of  his  people. 
When  Sallust  (in  the  spirit  and  manner  of  his  great 
model  Thucydides)  outlined  the  character  of  these  two 
uncommon  men,  both  had  passed  away.  The  pondering 
and  searching  historian  himself  had  passed  through  a 
checkered  career.  As  a  rising  politician  serving  the  cause 
of  disorder,  expelled  from  the  senate  for  the  profligacy 


CICERO  OF  ARPINUM.    CATO  OF  UTICA         379 

of  his  private  life,  he  had  been  rehabilitated  by  Caesar  : 
first  proconsul  of  Numidia,  he  had  retired  from  public 
life  a  man  of  immense  wealth  :  he  owed  all  to  Caesar. 

Sallust  draws  the  characters  of  Caesar  and  Cato  —  a 
tempting  subject  for  any  historian.  Again  we  see  what 
virtus  still  is :  the  "  apery "  of  Homer  and  Pindar :  the 
uncommon  excellence,  something  essentially  dynamic 
rather  than  ethical.  But  now  for  the  difference  (for 
our  purpose  a  parallel  of  their  gifts  and  endowments  is 
hardly  a  matter  of  primary  concern). 

"  Caesar  was  held  great  through  acts  of  kindness  and 
through  his  lavish  and  open  purse,  Cato  through  his  spot- 
less life.  The  one  became  renowned  by  clemency  and  a 
soft  heart,  to  the  other  one  his  dignity  had  given  distinc- 
tion. Csesar  gained  fame  by  giving,  assisting,  forgiving ; 
Cato,  by  absolutely  refraining  from  the  practice  of  bribery. 
The  one  was  a  refuge  for  men  in  trouble,  the  other  was 
destruction  to  evil-doers.  It  was  the  affability  of  the 
one,  and  the  unswerving  consistency  of  the  other,  that 
was  praised.  Finally  Csesar  had  made  it  his  determina- 
tion to  toil,  to  be  ever  on  the  alert,  while  devoted  to  his 
friends'  affairs  to  neglect  his  own,  to  refuse  no  service 
worthy  of  a  gift ;  he  eagerly  desired  for  himself  a  great 
sphere  of  power,  an  army,  a  war  of  novel  features,  where 
his  excellence  (virtus')  might  shine.  But  Cato's  earnest 
pursuit  was  directed  at  self-control,  at  seemliness,  but 
chiefly  at  rugged  sternness.  Not  by  means  of  wealth 
did  he  vie  with  the  man  of  wealth,  nor  by  means  of  par- 
tisanship with  the  partisan,  but  with  the  vigorous  man 
he  struggled  in  excellence,  with  the  continent  man  in 
purity,  with  the  man  of  integrity  in  incorruptibility,  he 
would  rather  be  than  seem  good :  thus,  the  less  he  pur- 
sued renown,  the  more  it  followed  him."  Adversaries 
as  these  champions  of  different  ideals  were  on  that  De- 
cember day  in  Cicero's  waning  consulate,  so  they  remained 
bitter  foes:  each  perhaps  the  object  of  the  other's  keenest 
antipathy.  A  little  more  than  sixteen  years  remained  for 
Cato,  for  Caesar  a  few  months  more  than  eighteen  years. 

In  Cato  there  subsisted  a  veritable  consciousness  of  the 


380  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

old  constitution,  and  he  stood  on  the  bulwarks  of  the  de- 
cadent republic  :  Caesar  intrepid  in  the  pursuit  of  his  own 
ambition,  and  beyond  a  certain  kindliness  and  impressive 
geniality  of  manner,  keen  in  his  choice  of  the  best  mech- 
anism whether  in  men  or  things,  to  accomplish  the  object 
which  he  happened  to  be  pursuing.  Success  and  avail- 
ability: these  were  for  him  the  only  criteria  in  the  prob- 
lems of  conduct. 

When  we  feel  with  Cato,  even  in  a  small  measure,  how, 
to  his  unerring  glance,  the  road  was  being  blazed,  from 
month  to  month,  and  from  year  to  year,  that  led  straight 
to  an  imperial  throne,  to  purple  and  diadem,  there  must 
have  been  in  his  lonely  soul  a  veritable  agony  and  a 
trampling  upon  all  his  dearest  possessions.  His  was  the 
sad  role  of  Cassandra.  When  Caesar  gained  his  Gallic 
imperium,  Cato  told  Pompey  that  now  Pompey  was 
placing  Caesar  on  his  own  neck,  unwittingly  indeed,  but 
when  he  was  to  feel  the  load  and  the  sensation  of  being 
overpowered,  he  would  find  himself  in  a  position  where 
he  could  not  set  down  the  load  nor  endure  to  bear  it. 
Csesar  won  his  short-lived  throne  in  his  own  way  .  .  . 
foolish  the  historian  who  would  credulously  accept  Caesar's 
own  account  of  his  own  acts,  of  his  own  motives.  As  for 
the  "  world-spirit  "  called  in  by  certain  Caesar- worshippers 
like  Mommsen  to  sanctify  the  conquests  of  that  great 
captain,  that  world-spirit  unfortunately,  like  flea  or  locust, 
hopped  soon  away  and  lighted  on  the  brawny  chest  of 
Antony,  on  the  languorous  eyelashes  of  Cleopatra.  .  .  . 
What  a  pity !  Odd  dialectic  of  world-movement.  It  was 
in  the  Libyan  harbor-town  of  Utica  where  the  enrolling 
tide  of  Caesar's  power  determined  the  unflinching  Stoic 
to  be  faithful  to  his  doctrine  of  freedom  and  make  an  end 
of  life  when  there  was  an  end  of  freedom.  Deep  convic- 
tion and  the  very  anchor  of  his  being  were  at  one  in  his 
resolve  to  make  an  end.  That  last  night,  unto  midnight, 
he  read,  not  in  Zeno,  Kleanthes,  or  Chrysippus,  the  found- 
ers of  his  own  sect  —  but  he  chose  that  classic  of  the  im- 
mortality of  the  soul,  Plato's  "Phsedo."  There  he  read 
of  spheres  infinitely  more  perfect  than  our  troubled  and 


CICERO  OF  ARPINUM.    CATO  OF  UTICA         381 

troublous  planet :  celestial  spheres  surpassingly  fair  and 
satisfying  the  soul. 

He  read,  that  last  night,  of  a  judgment  of  departed 
spirits,  of  retribution,  and  cleansing  tribulation.  And 
he  also  read  these  words :  "  But  on  this  account  must  be 
of  good  cheer  ("  Phsedo,"  114  d)  in  his  concern  for  his 
own  soul,  the  man,  who  in  life  gave  short  shrift  to  the 
pleasures  of  the  body  and  its  adornments  as  being  alien 
to  him  .  .  .  but,  having  adorned  his  soul  not  with  foreign 
adornment  but  with  its  own,  continence  and  righteousness 
and  fortitude  and  freedom  and  truth,  thus  awaits  the  pas- 
sage into  the  realm  of  Hades,  as  resolved  on  making  the 
passage  when  fate  calls." 

NOTE.  —  Since  Mommsen's  and  Drumann's  books,  one  may,  in  very 
truth,  cite  with  reference  to  the  current  estimation  of  Cicero  the 
words  of  Schiller  in  his  Wallenstein: 

"  Von  der  Parteien  Hass  und  Gunst  verwirrt, 
Schwankt  sein  Charakterbild  in  der  Geschichte." 

There  could  be  adduced  a  formidable  bibliography  on  both  sides. 
Autobiographical  material  has  been  gathered  from  Cicero  himself 
and  coordinated  and  arranged  with  much  skill  and  industry  by  W. 
H.  D.  Suringar :  "  M.  Tullii  Ciceronis  Commentarii  Rerum  Suarum 
sive  De  Vita  Sua."  Leyden,  1854.  The  letters  to  Atticus  can  be 
abused,  they  should  not  be,  by  any  one  who  would  make  Cicero  odious 
or  belittle  him.  Here  must  be  cited  by  far  the  most  elaborate  and 
adequate  edition  (of  Cicero's  entire  body  of  letters)  known  to  classical 
erudition.  It  is  :  "  The  Correspondence  of  M.  Tullius  Cicero  arranged 
according  to  its  chronological  order,"  etc.,  etc.,  by  Robert  Yelverton 
Tyrrell,  six  volumes,  2d  ed.,  1885  sqq.  Entirely  admirable  are  the 
essays  introducing  the  chief  periods  :  "  On  the  character  of  Cicero  as 
a  Public  Man,  Cicero  in  his  private  life,  Cicero  and  the  Triumvirate, 
Cicero's  Provincial  government,"  etc.,  etc.  I  may  perhaps  cite  my 
own  introduction  to  Cicero's  "Second  Philippic,"  1901,  New  York. 
Merguet's  splendid  Concordance  to  Cicero's  Philosophical  Writings 
is  worthy  of  great  praise. 

As  for  Cato  the  Younger,  Plutarch's  Biography  largely  is  a  Greek 
transcript  made  from  Cicero's  monograph  penned  soon  after  the  death 
of  the  Stoic  statesman.  Caesar  composed  a  petty  and  ignoble  reply 
aided  by  members  of  his  inner  circle,  such  as  Hirtius.  Fortunately 
for  Caesar's  fame  this  rejoinder  has  perished  :  what  shreds  have  been 
preserved  by  Plutarch  exhibit  a  spirit  of  malignant  hatred  and  un- 
critical anecdote-mongering. 

The  "  Onomasticon "  of  Orelli's  edition  of  Cicero  must  not  be 
omitted  here. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

TWO  ROMAN  EPICUREANS 

T.  LUCRETIUS  CARUS  was  born  very  nearly  in  the  same 
year  as  Cato  the  Younger.  He  died  about  53  or  54  B.C. 
Few  are  the  fragments  of  tradition  concerning  his  life  and 
work  (in  Jerome,  in  Cicero's  letters)  :  the  latter  clearly 
never  was  revised  much,  from  the  first  draft  or  last. 

To  expect  a  kind  of  spiritual  fervor  in  a  work  largely 
devoted  to  a  materialistic  and  a  mechanical  conception  of 
the  Universe,  this  indeed  would  seem  absurd.  Still  with 
the  ruthless  denial  of  aught  beyond  force  and  matter,  we 
meet  furthermore  a  condemnation  and  a  denial  of  almost 
all  the  things  which  the  natural  man  prizes  or  holds  dear. 
Death  and  the  fear  of  death,  the  obsession  of  the  soul  with 
aims  vain  in  themselves :  Epicurus  with  the  cowl  of 
Thomas  a  Kempis. 

For  the  fear  of  death  and  the  concern  for  the  fate  of  the 
soul  was  a  very  real  and  a  very  widespread  sentiment : 
with  all  the  confinement  of  rite  and  ritual  to  the  affairs  of 
this  life  and  this  world,  with  all  the  non-transcendental 
character  of  fairly  all  bodies  of  sentiment  :  religious,  civic, 
philosophical  —  why  the  restlessness  as  to  the  hereafter? 

Furthermore,  the  common  identification  of  gods,  and 
gods  ruling,  with  these  phenomena  of  the  sky  above  us, 
thunder  and  lightning,  sunshine  and  rain,  dew  and  hoar- 
frost :  this,  too,  our  emancipator  and  apostle  of  freedom 
would  pluck  from  the  human  breast  (Book  6).  "This 
it  is  to  fully  look  into  the  nature  of  lightning  (6,  379), 
and  to  see  by  what  force  it  accomplishes  each  thing,  not 
to  unroll,  in  vain,  Etruscan  formularies  and  to  search  into 
the  suggestions  of  the  hidden  mind  of  the  gods.  ..." 
His  aim  is  to  loosen  the  shackles  of  "religion":  and  to 

382 


TWO  ROMAN  EPICUREANS  383 

administer  the  doleful  lore  of  hopeless  Epicureanism  to 
his  reader,  as  bitter  medicines  are  given  to  children  :  when 
the  edge  of  the  cup  is  smeared  with  honey.  The  dignity 
and  force  indeed  of  the  hexameter  of  Lucretius  assures  his 
name  a  foremost  position  in  classic  letters. 

But  what  are  the  chief  dogmas  by  which  the  soul  is  to 
be  emancipated  ?  In  this  world  of  ours  there  is  no  design 
elevating  man :  this  material  universe,  of  which  we  are  a 
transitory  part,  was  not  wrought  by  aim  or  plan  :  the  atoms 
supplied  by  an  infinity  of  matter,  under  spur  of  mechanical 
impulse  from  eternity,  have,  by  their  various  combinations, 
associations,  positions,  been  making  and  unmaking  this 
world,  and  ourselves.  Innumerable  were  the  combina- 
tions, until  finally  a  creative  and  organic  synthesis  even- 
tuated accidentally.  There  are  other  forms  of  concourse 
of  atoms,  infinite,  but  beyond  our  ken  (2,  1048  *<?<?.).  Our 
eyes  were  not  formed  to  the  end  that  we  might  see  there- 
with (4,  822  sqq. ) :  that  we  might  set  goodly  stride  for- 
ward, not  for  this  end  was  man  endowed  with  thighs  and 
calves :  no  part  of  our  physical  being  was  moulded  for  an 
end :  but  that  which  is  produced,  begets  use.  Here  was 
the  sharpest  point  of  conflict  and  contradiction  with  the 
nobler  Stoic  school :  no,  this  universe  is  not  divine,  it  is 
not  reason  incarnate,  nor  has  man  the  primacy.  Not  for 
him  was  this  abode  prepared  :  not  for  such  design  must 
we  praise  the  providence  of  the  gods  (5,  156  sqq.).  Ab- 
surd :  for  where  would  be  the  perfect  bliss  of  the  gods  if 
they  troubled  themselves  about  poor  tiny  ephemeral  and 
mortal  man  ?  What  motives  can  there  be  for  them, 
eternal  and  blessed,  in  any  sacrifices  of  our  own  that  would 
move  them  to  do  anything  for  our  sake  ?  They  were  in 
bliss  from  eternity  :  why  should  they  at  some  later  point 
of  time  desire  to  change  their  former  life  ?  (v.  169). 

The  calm  geniality  of  the  Attic  garden  of  the  founder 
is  not  cast  over  this  unique  didactic  poem.  The  gloomy 
poet  essays  no  theodicy  in  contemplating  our  world:  no 
best  of  all  possible  worlds,  this.  It  is  too  faulty: 

"  tanta  stat  praedita  culpa "  (5,  199) . 


384  TESTIMONIUM  ANIM.E 

A  very  large  part  of  the  earth's  surface  is  mountainous 
and  untillable ;  there  are  cliffs  and  marshes ;  there  is  the 
vast  expanse  of  the  barren  sea;  there  are  the  zones  of 
excessive  heat,  the  spheres  of  killing  frost.  And  as  for 
the  domain  which  nurtures  man,  there  is  the  incessant 
struggle  with  thistles ;  stout  arms  must  ply  the  hoe,  with 
many  a  sigh ;  deep  must  the  ploughshare  cut  into  the  soil : 
there  is  drought,  too ;  there  are  freshets  and  frosts  and  hur- 
ricanes ;  there  are  pests  and  vermin  and  wild  beasts ;  there 
are  plagues  and  epidemics  ;  there  is  premature  death  — 
best  of  worlds?  The  very  infant,  like  a  seafaring  man 
cast  ashore  by  cruel  waves,  bare  does  he  lie  upon  the  ground 
without  the  faculty  of  speech,  needing  every  aid  to  live, 
when  first  through  the  mother's  pangs  nature  has  shed  the 
babe,  and  with  mournful  wailing  does  it  fill  the  chamber, 
as  is  meet  for  him  for  whom  life  has.  so  many  troubles 
in  store. 

As  for  the  soul  (Book  3),  it  is  mainly  the  conscious  and 
dominant  spot  of  vitality  or  animation.  The  soul  is  ma- 
terial and  it  is  mortal,  precisely  as  is  the  body  :  for  it  too 
is  corporeal,  though  its  stuff  is  of  exquisite  delicacy  and 
fineness.  The  doctrine  of  the  soul  (3,  30  sqq.*)  is  set  forth 
by  the  poet  to  the  end  that  all  fear  of  a  lower  world  may 
be  driven  out  utterly,  which  fear  keeps  in  unrest  the  life 
of  man,  casting  over  all  the  black  pall  of  the  fear  of  death 
and  leaves  not  any  pleasure  clear  and  pure.  Men  often 
say  they  know  that  the  substance  of  the  soul  is  the  same 
as  that  of  blood,  or  of  wind  ;  so  they  say,  or  this  too,  that 
often  diseases  are  more  to  be  feared  or  a  life  of  civil  oppro- 
brium, than  the  black  realms  of  death.  But  still  they 
cling  to  life  with  stubborn  perseverance.  Exiled  they 
live,  out  of  their  own  country,  stained  with  base  charges, 
visited  with  every  kind  of  sorrow,  they  live  after  all,  and 
withersoever  they  come,  they  make  sacrifices  to  deceased 
ancestors  (parentant,  3,  51)  and  slay  black  victims  and  to 
the  divine  spirits  of  the  departed  they  send  offerings  and 
much  more  keenly  in  distressful  situations  do  they  turn 
their  minds  towards  religion.  This,  then,  to  Lucretius's 
mind,  is  one  cause  of  profound  unhappiness.  But  he  goes 


TWO  ROMAN  EPICUREANS  385 

on  to  another.  Covetousness  and  political  ambition  are 
also  great  evils  (3,  59  sqq.^).  These  induce  their  devotees 
to  transgress  legal  right,  and  sometimes  as  allies  in  crimes 
and  assistants  therein  to  work  night  and  day  that  they  may 
rise  to  supreme  power:  "these  wounds  of  life  in  great 
part  are  fed  by  the  fear  of  death."  Humble  civil  status 
and  poverty  seem  to  them  intolerable  evils :  clearly 
Lucretius  profoundly  condemns,  in  his  way,  craving  and 
getting,  and  the  pride  of  life.  Sulla,  Marius,  Catiline,  had 
sunk  deeply  into  the  soul  of  this  spiritual  materialist. 
Envy,  too,  he  goes  on,  embitters  and  poisons  the  human 
heart.  Often  the  very  fear  of  death  has  so  preyed  upon 
the  consciousness  of  men  that,  in  despair,  they  have  taken 
their  own  life. 

And  what  is  this  spiritual  solace  and  salve  of  souls  ? 
At  bottom  it  is  something  negative :  it  is  a  form  of  res- 
ignation. We  must  conform  to  a  conception  simply 
mechanical,  and  exclusively  materialistic;  then  —  then 
indeed,  Lucretius  infers,  will  we  find  peace.  Clearly  he 
indeed  had  passed  through  this  emancipation,  he  had 
freed  his  soul,  in  a  way :  he  had  removed  it  and  his  life 
from  the  current  drift  and  striving.  It  is  this  psycholog- 
ical process  of  actual  experience,  which  endows  with  a 
certain  subjective  truth  and  substance  his  fervid  lauda- 
tions of  his  teacher  Epicurus.  "  Sweet  it  is,  when  on  the 
great  sea  gales  trouble  the  wide  surface,  from  the  land  to 
gaze  upon  the  distress  of  another :  not  because  it  is  a 
gratifying  pleasure  that  any  one  should  be  harassed,  but 
because  it  is  sweet  clearly  to  perceive  the  evils  from  which 
thou  thyself  art  free.  Sweet  also  to  gaze  upon  the  great 
contest  of  war  marshalled  on  the  plains  without  any  risk 
of  your  own.  But  nothing  is  more  charming  than  to  hold 
well  fortified  the  lofty  and  serene  eyries  of  the  Wise, 
whence  thou  mayest  gaze  down  upon  others  and  every- 
where see  men  straying,  and  roaming  at  will  seek  the  way 
of  life  :  to  vie  with  each  other  in  genius,  to  struggle  in 
the  domain  of  noble  birth,  night  and  day  to  strive  with 
eminent  effort  to  rise  to  supreme  power  and  gain  control 
of  affairs.  O  how  wretched  the  minds  of  men,  how  blind 
2c 


386  TESTIMOXIUM  ANIALE 

their  hearts !  In  what  darkness  of  life  and  in  what  perils 
is  spent  this  little  span  of  life  whatever  it  may  be !  Not 
to  see,  that  Nature  fairly  shouts  at  us  no  other  truth  but 
this,  that  he  who  is  free  from  that  pain  which  is  removed 
from  the  body,  that  he  in  mind  shall  enjoy  pleasurable 
consciousness  removed  from  care  and  fear." 

In  his  scorn  for  the  boons  striven  for  by  the  successful 
men — externalities  indeed,  valued  as  futilities  by  the  delib- 
erate valuation  of  the  illumined  soul  —  in  this  scorn,  I 
say,  this  particular  Epicurean  may  challenge  comparison 
with  the  Stoics  themselves.  Futile  are  luxury  and  costly 
appointments  of  life. 

The  strongest  of  physical  passions  is  replete  with  imper- 
fections and  grievously  disturbs  the  peace  of  the  soul. 
Care  and  concern  are  the  only  sure  fruits  thereof.  It  is 
like  a  thirsty  man  in  his  slumbers,  when  there  is  no  water. 
To  which  must  be  added  the  damage  to  purse  and  fame. 
Babylonian  rugs,  Sicyonian  slaves,  emeralds,  betoken  the 
folly  of  your  lover  (4,  1121  sqq.^):  patrimonies  are  turned 
into  fashionable  millinery.  The  slave  of  this  one  passion 
wastes  his  all  for  it.  The  satire  which  Lucretius  pours 
out  on  all  this,  and  on  the  very  perversion  of  judgment 
and  good  sense  on  the  part  of  the  infatuated  lover,  is  very 
bitter.  Apples  of  Sodom  that  leave  but  the  palate  cloyed 
with  ashes. 

With  all  the  apparatus  of  Democritean  and  Epicurean 
atomism  and  materialism,  the  burden  of  the  poem  is  gloomy, 
for  it  is  death  ;  doubly  gloomy,  for  it  is  the  death  of  the 
soul,  the  soul  a  mere  property  and  phenomenon  of  physical 
functions.  With  the  academic  side  of  all  this  we  are  not 
concerned :  let  us  pursue  the  moral  side.  Clearly  we 
have  here  not  the  call  "  to  eat  and  drink  and  be  merry,  for 
to-morrow  we  are  no  more. "  The  absence,  the  very  positive 
and  unmistakable  absence  of  this  gospel  of  the  garden  of 
Epicurus,  is  certainly  very  noteworthy,  very  remarkable. 
Lucretius  holds  with  great  earnestness,  that,  after  the 
mortality  of  the  soul  has  been  fully  demonstrated  to  any 
mind,  that  mind  should  properly  feel  no  concern  or  anxiety 
(3,  830)  as  to  death  henceforth.  When  we  shall  not  be, 


TWO  ROMAN  EPICUREANS  387 

we  will  be  as  we  were  when  we  were  not  yet  —  nothing. 
This  is  the  consolation  of  the  soul.  There  cannot  be  a 
future  pain  when  the  subject  of  that  pain  will  be  extinct 
(3,  863).  "He  is  as  though  he  had  never  been  born, 
when  undying  death  takes  away  mortal  life"  (869). 
There  will  be  no  spiritual  personality  standing  by  the  pal- 
let on  which  lies  the  casement  of  clay,  its  former  domicile. 
What  matters  the  short  remaining  history  of  that  clay  ? 
Whether  mangled  by  beasts  or  birds,  or  burned  on  the 
pyre  or  preserved  in  honey :  it  is  all  one.  And  here  the 
fervid  preacher  of  extinction  goes  on  to  a  famous  passage, 
veritable  Elegy  :  "  Presently  (3,  894)  the  cheery  home  will 
not  receive  thee,  nor  good  wife  nor  sweet  children  run  to 
meet  thee  to  snatch  kisses,  nor  touch  thy  heart  with  a 
charm  unuttered.  Nor  wilt  thou  be  able  to  be  a  man  of 
vigorous  achievements,"  they  say :  "  all  the  bounties  of 
life  one  hostile  day  has  taken  from  you."  But  this  they 
do  not  add :  "  Nor  does  there  henceforth  dwell  in  thee 
any  yearning  for  these  things.  If  they  were  to  see  this 
well  in  their  mind  and  follow  it  with  their  utterances, 
they  would  free  themselves  from  great  anguish  and  fear 
of  the  soul."  In  that  bliss  of  extinction  we  shall  be 
strangers  to  want,  to  pain,  to  fear,  to  yearning.  Our 
atoms  (924)  have  passed  out  of  sensation.  Death  indeed 
will  then  be  to  us  somewhat  less  than  nothing.  This  is 
the  lesson  taught  by  the  lore  of  the  Universe  :  "  Why,  O 
foolish  wight,  bewailest  and  weepest  thou  for  death?  .  .  . 
Why  dost  thou  not  retire  like  a  guest  sated  with  life, 
and  with  calm  spirit  take  thy  unruffled  rest?  But  if  all 
things  that  you  once  enjoyed  have  been  poured  out  and 
perished,  and  life  offers  you  now  but  the  impact  of  harsh 
sensation,  why  do  you  seek  to  add  more  of  it  .  .  .  ?" 
Organic  life  must  needs  replenish  itself  out  of  death :  it 
is  a  cosmic  necessity.  "  Mere  tenants  are  we  all  to  Life, 
and  hold  it  not  in  fee": 

"  Vitaque  manciple  nulli  datur,  omnibus  usu"  (3,  971). 

The  inferno  of  Greek  myths  is  here :  is  in  this  terrestrial 
and  transitory  life.     The  agonized  fear  felt  by  Tantalus: 


388  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

it  is  the  fear  of  the  gods,  the  dread  of  fortune.  There  is 
no  Tityos  overspreading  many  fathoms  with  his  reclining 
frame,  writhing  in  agony  while  his  inner  organs  are  ever 
consumed  by  vultures  and  ever  grow  anew :  nay,  our  pas- 
sions and  morbid  emotions  in  this  world,  and  here  —  they 
do  gnaw  at  our  vitals  and  rob  us  of  peace. 

Yes,  that  inner  calm  and  equipoise  :  that  indeed  is  the 
boon  of  boons  —  not  restless  change  of  abode,  as  when 
your  rich  Roman  feverishly  drives  into  the  country  to  his 
villa,  as  though  hurrying  to  a  fire  (3,  1063) :  hardly  ar- 
rived he  yawns  or  sinks  into  deep  sleep  or  again  hurriedly 
returns  to  town.  Thus-  each  one  endeavors  to  escape  from 
his  very  self.  In  vain.  Clearly  there  is  here  no  glorifica- 
tion of  things  —  as  if  things  could  satisfy  the  soul. 


A  word  as  to  his  view  on  the  origin  of  actual  religion — 
how  close  a  transcript  from  Epicurus,  we  cannot  deter- 
mine. Nor  does  it  much  matter,  for  the  fervor  of  the 
disciple  is  no  less  earnest  though  it  kindled  its  torch  from 
the  scrolls  of  Epicurus. 

In  vain  will  fathers  weary  the  gods  to  be  blessed  with 
offspring — in  vain  they  weary  the  oracles,  to  fortify  their 
gray  hairs  with  sons  (4,  1236).  Now  what  was  it  that 
filled  cities  with  altars  (5,  1161  «<?<?.)  ?  What  made  men 
establish  anniversary  rites  ?  What  is  the  source  of  that 
awe  so  deep-seated  in  men,  which  awe  rears  new  shrines  of 
the  gods  in  all  the  earth?  Purely  out  of  the  excited 
imagination.  Particularly  in  dreams  gigantic  and  glorious 
visions  appeared:  these  seemed  to  move  and  speak.  Their 
form  was  majestic,  their  grace  inexpressible.  These 
apparitions  mankind  began  to  endow  with  imperishable 
existence,  and  this  because  these  blessed  forms  seemed  to 
know  nothing  of  the  fear  of  death.  These,  in  the  dreams 
of  men,  seemed  to  accomplish  great  things  and  still  do  so 
without  any  toil .  whatever.  Furthermore  they  observed 
the  system  of  the  celestial  order  and  the  recurrent  seasons 
of  the  year.  The  causes  thereof  they  could  not  under- 
stand. And  so,  as  an  asylum  for  their  ignorance,  they 


TWO  ROMAN  EPICUREANS  389 

burdened  everything  on  the  gods  and  assumed  that  by  their 
nod  all  things  were  governed.  "  In  heaven  (5, 1183)  they 
placed  the  abodes  of  the  gods  and  their  eyries,  because 
through  the  firmament  night  and  moon  seem  to  revolve, 
moon  and  day  and  night  and  the  august  constellations  of 
night,  and  the  night-flitting  torches  of  night  (meteors), 
.  .  .  clouds,  sun,  rainshowers,  snow,  winds,  thunderbolt, 
hail,  and  rapid  rumblings  and  great  mutterings  of  threats." 

Unspeakable  the  amount  of  woe  and  trouble  that  man- 
kind has  brought  upon  itself  from  these  fancies  !  What 
fancied  devotion  this  of  appearing  often  with  veiled  head 
(Roman  fashion)  and  face  about  toward  the  idol  —  the 
stone  —  (after  praying)  and  to  visit  all  the  altars,  or  to 
prostrate  oneself  and  to  spread  out  the  hands  before  the 
shrines  of  the  gods,  to  sprinkle  (5,  1201)  the  altars  with 
much  blood  of  fourfooted  beasts,  or  to  make  an  endless  chain 
of  vows  —  rather  than  to  gaze  upon  all  the  phenomena 
of  the  sky  with  a  calm  and  peaceful  soul. 

It  is  this  fear,  engendered  by  the  sight  of  the  mighty 
workings  in  the  sky,  that  has  driven  nations  and  individuals 
to  fear  for  themselves  retribution  for  wicked  word  or 
wicked  deed. 

The  sense  of  littleness  and  elemental  helplessness  in  our 
confronting  the  mighty,  though  inanimate,  unconscious, 
blind  forces  of  the  Universe  —  this,  Lucretius  held,  bred 
011  earth  the  feeling  and  the  habits  of  religion. 

The  only  consolation  of  our  mysterious  hermit  and  re- 
cluse was  the  emancipation  of  the  soul  through  the  con- 
viction that  it  was  merely  a  transitory  bubble.  Was  it  a 
consolation  for  the  confessor  of  the  Epicurean  sect  ?  As 
for  Lucretius,  there  is  a  tradition  that  he  perished  by  his 
own  hand,  having  become  insane  through  love  philtre: 
the  obsession  of  love,  in  one  whose  pen  dripped  vitriol  upon 
that  weakness;  madness  in  one  who  everywhere  preached 
the  gospel  of  the  calm  soul  and  the  unruffled  mind;  suicide, 
when  the  author  had  indeed  defied  death  and  the  fear  of 
death  so  incessantly.  It  is  all  very  weird  and  gloomy. 
What  of  the  thin  crust  of  pagan  creature-bliss  and  the 
gleam  of  Olympian  sunshine  ? 


390  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

But  I  have  merely  wished,  here  as  everywhere  in  this 
work,  neither  to  belittle  nor  to  magnify,  but  to  accomplish 
this  alone :  discover  and  record  the  spiritual  elements  in 
classic  civilization. 


As  for  Horace,  the  Freedman's  son  from  Apulia,  and 
comrade  and  bosom-friend  of  the  Tuscan  Mascenas  (who 
knew  how  to  live  but  not  how  to  die),  it  would  at  first 
blush  seem  preposterous,  to  meet  his  name  in  these  essays. 
And  still:  the  verse  of  Horace  reveals  the  claims  and 
strivings,  the  theories  and  the  precepts  of  your  ver- 
satile Epicurean  in  a  much  more  universal  fashion 
than  does  the  didactic  poem  of  the  gloomy  and  fervid 
propagandist,  Lucretius.  Young  people  have  confessed 
that  when  they  read  "  Hamlet "  for  the  first  time,  they 
were  arrested  by  the  puzzling  number  of  famous  common- 
places of  the  world's  wit  and  wisdom  which  Britannia's 
foremost  poet  had  cribbed,  they  naively  thought.  As  for 
Horace,  the  refined  world  of  deliberate  literary  composition 
has  culled  from  him  more  current  commonplace  than  from 
any  other  Latin  writer.  An  infant  when  Cicero,  Cato,  and 
the  old  order  were  beginning  to  retreat  before  the  dynasts, 
young  Horace  was  in  his  seventeenth  year  when  Pompey 
rode  from  Pharsalos  to  the  Sea.  When  Brutus  and  Cassius 
were  organizing  the  East  against  Caesar's  heirs,  the  young 
Apulian  was  imbibing  Greek  philosophy  at  the  quiet  Uni- 
versity town  of  Athens.  A  staff-officer  of  Brutus,  he  lived 
through  the  rout  after  Philippi,  42  B.C.,  and  with  amnesty 
gained  somehow,  he  secured  a  place  in  the  guild  of  treasury 
clerks  at  Rome. 

He  was  no  Cato.  His  graceful  pen  won  him  his  Sabine 
farm  from  Maecenas,  gained  him  several  bounties  of 
financial  endowment  from  Augustus.  How  closely  he 
copied  the  rhythm  and  metre  of  the  Greek  lyricists  —  to 
us  it  is  an  exotic  performance,  no  matter  how  frequently 
he  emphasized  that  particular  achievement.  If  there  were 
in  him  no  concerns  for  us  but  those  of  grammaticus  and 
rhetor,  I  would  waste  my  reader's  attention.  But  there 


TWO  ROMAN  EPICUREANS  391 

are  graver  and  more  durable  matters  for  us,  and  for  this 
book.  He  is  no  Pindar,  no  Burns,  nor  a  Wordsworth,  least 
of  all  a  Milton.  A  Greekling  when  there  was  no  other 
fashion,  he  was  really  saturated  with  Greek  verse  and 
literary  art,  and  with  many  sides  of  Greek  philosophy. 
Not  only  was  his  ear  attuned  to  Sappho,  Alkaios,  Anakreon 
and  Alkman,  Archilochos  and  Hipponax,  but  Menander 
and  Socratic  dialogues  furnished  flavor  and  spirit  to  his 
social  causerie.  Familiar  with  the  head  of  his  own  sect, 
he  still  was  very  unlike  Lucretius:  unwilling  to  subscribe 
to  the  formulas  of  any  single  master,  more  desirous,  like 
Aristippos  of  Gyrene,  to  subordinate  life  to  himself  rather 
than  reverse  the  process. 

Considering  that  to  his  philosophy  there  is  no  concern  but 
with  life  and  the  art  of  living  (right  living,  mind  you,  as  he 
claims  it),  it  is  curious  that  death  and  the  concern  of  dying 
is  rarely  absent  from  his  consciousness  and  from  his  verse. 
"  Mors  ultima  linea  rerumst."  And  so  the  gloomy  mask  of 
Pluto  intrudes  itself  into  a  lyric  of  vernal  joys  ("  Odes," 
1,  4) :  Winter  flown,  ships  are  launched,  sheep  leave  their 
winter-folds,  the  ploughman  quits  the  fireside  —  ointments 
for  locks  and  myrtle  and  fresh  blossom,  and  let  the  hus- 
bandman propitiate  Faunus  —  for  calving  time  is  near. 
"  Pale  Death  with  foot  impartial  thumps  the  hovels  of 
the  poor  and  castellated  mansions  of  the  great.  My 
blessed  Sestius,  Life's  total  —  ah,  how  short  —  forbids  us 
entering  upon  hope  remote.  Presently  the  smothering 
pall  of  night  will  be  upon  thee,  and  Pluto's  beggarly  abode; 
when  thither  thou  hast  gone  thou  wilt  not  cast  the  dice 
for  primacy  at  cups,  nor  marvel  at  the  tender  beauty 
of  Lycidas."  .  .  .  "Thou  must  not  seek, — 'tis  sin  to 
know  —  what  end  to  me  what  end  to  thee  the  gods  have 
given,  Leuconoe,  nor  essay  thou  Chaldsean  horoscope.  Far 
better  'tis  to  suffer  all  that  is  in  Future's  lap:  whether  more 
winters  Jupiter  has  allotted  thee,  or,  this  for  last  one,  which 
at  this  moment  on  projecting  reefs  exhausts  the  fury  of  the 
Tuscan  main.  Be  wise,  strain  wines,  and,  as  our  span  is 
short,  snip  off  the  hope  for  things  remote"  ("Odes,"  1, 11). 

Thus  death  dominates  life,  its  monition  attending  all 


392  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

enjoyment.  Horace  is  chiefly  concerned  with  his  own  state 
of  being.  Others  —  here  his  humanity  is  baldly  negative 
—  are  of  no  particular  concern  to  him,  excepting  in  so  far 
as  they  enhance  his  pleasurable  state  of  being,  or  in  this, 
that  their  conduct  impresses  the  lessons  of  wisdom. 
Chiefly,  however,  do  they  do  this  through  acts  of  folly. 
Their  valuation  and  overvaluation  points  the  wrong 
road.  They  are  wrapt  in  money-making  —  they  give 
themselves  up  to  amatory  passions,  they  hitch  their  souls 
to  the  car  of  political  ambition,  whereas  the  wise  man  will 
place  his  happiness  in  that  enjoyment  which  follows  the 
"  golden  mean  "  (aurea  mediocritas)  between  extremes, 
which  follows  the  aim  of  the  unruffled  soul.  Thus  Pride, 
Covetousness,  Concupiscence,  are  condemned,  not  indeed, 
from  any  religious  motive,  not  even  from  a  civic  one  — 
but  mainly  from  this,  that  they  interfere  with  that  equi- 
poise which  is  indissolubly  bound  up  with  the  refined 
pleasure  of  the  best  state  of  being.  This  peace  of  being 
is  essentially  different  from  the  passionate  laudation  of 
extinction  ever  recurrent  in  Lucretius.  This  peace,  this 
calm,  is  really  the  universal  quest  of  mankind  ("  Odes," 
2,  16)  :  in  all  the  unrest  of  life  on  the  sea,  of  war  on 
land,  this  is  the  goal  of  all.  But  neither  treas- 
ures nor  purple  can  purchase  it.  Care  —  that  gloomy 
and  persistent  fiend  —  no  consular  honors  avail  against 
it.  The  panelled  ceilings  of  palaces  —  cares  flit  about 
them.  Travel  as  you  may  :  flee  from  yourself,  if  you  can. 
Be  thou  content  :  though  no  scene  without  the  gloomy 
skyline,  no  glimpse  of  the  sea  of  life  but  the  barren  and 
rocky  coast  is  included  which  terminates  the  voyage  : 
"  Perceivest  thou  ("  Odes,"  1,  9)  how  Mount  Soracte 
stands  white  with  its  pall  of  snow,  nor  now  the  toiling 
forests  bear  up  under  their  load,  and  rivers  are  halted 
by  the  biting  frost.  Dispel  the  frosty  air,  pile  freely 
thou  the  billets  on  the  hearth,  and  draw  the  four-year 
vintage  from  the  Sabine  jar.  Leave  to  the  gods  the  rest: 
as  soon  as  they  have  levelled  winds  that  on  the  seething 
main  do  battle  to  the  death  —  then  neither  cypresses  nor 
hoary  mountain  ashes  are  as  much  as  stirred.  What  will 


TWO  ROMAN  EPICUREANS  393 

to-morrow  be,  avoid  to  ask  it,  and  whatever  days  Chance 
shall  give,  book  them  with  profit.  ..."  It  is  not  sub- 
mission, it  is  not  resignation  :  no,  the  soul  must  not  be 
troubled  nor  disconcerted  ;  it  is  wise  self -adjustment.  It 
is  a  system  of  withdrawal,  this  Epicurean  wisdom  of  living, 
from  aught  that  jars,  from  aught  that  contributes  nothing 
to  the  desirable  frame  of  soul.  "  A  friend  of  the  Muses, 
gloom  and  fears  will  I  deliver  to  the  saucy  winds  to  carry 
them  to  Cretan  sea,  exquisitely  unconcerned  as  to  who  is 
dreaded  as  sovran  of  the  icy  north,  what  frightens  Tiridates 
(in  the  East)  .  .  ."  ("  Odes,"  1,  26). 

A  deep  spiritual  truth  teaches  ("Odes,"  2,  2)  :  Do  not 
vainly  fancy  that  boundless  wealth  will  satisfy  the  soul : 
contentment  and  resigning  of  the  power  of  great  potentates 
marks  the  sovereign  of  himself.  There  is  something  in 
covetousness  comparable  to  the  watery  decay  of  our  blood 
in  dropsy.  "  Care  follows  growing  gold,  and  hunger  for 
still  more.  Justly  have  I  ever  shivered  at  the  thought  of 
raising  high  my  head  observed  of  many."  .  .  .  "the  more 
things  each  man  will  deny  himself,  from  the  gods  will  he 
bear  away  more  :  bare  I  make  for  the  camp  of  those  who 
covet  nothing,  a  deserter  I  keenly  desire  to  leave  the  fac- 
tion of  the  rich,  more  splendid  master  of  possession  dis- 
dained, than  if  I  were  said  to  store  in  my  granaries  all  that 
the  strenuous  Apulian  ploughs,  resourceless  amid  great 
wealth  "  ("Odes,"  3,  16,  16).  A  very  positive  and  solid 
contentment  Horace  owed  to  his  munificent  friend  —  his 
quiet  abode  on  the  salubrious  Digentia  brook  amid  the 
Sabine  mountains,  a  realized  ideal  of  life  —  :  from  those 
solitudes  and  in  the  environment  of  nature's  wholesome 
bounty  he  looked  out  upon  the  so-called  great  world  as  an 
obsession  from  which  he  had  escaped  : 

"  Tief  die  Welt  verworren  schallt  —  " 

When  the  inner  voice  or  an  outward  occurrence  stirred 
his  pen,  then  only  would  he  write  and  then,  too,  with  in- 
finite care.  His  literary  ideals  were  high  —  his  sense  of 
his  own  success  was  keen  :  the  categorical  anticipation  of 
future  and  enduring  renown  is  uttered  by  him  with  a  posi- 


394  TESTIMONIUM  ANIM.E 

tiveness  rare  even  in  classical  antiquity  :  "  Not  wholly 
shall  I  die  :  a  great  part  of  myself  shall  escape  the  god- 
dess whom  serve  they  who  lay  out  the  dead."  .  .  . 
He  is  assured  of  the  Delphic  laurel  ("  Odes,"  3,  30). 
Spaniard  and  Gaul  will  make  themselves  familiar  with  his 
works  —  no  empty  dirges  at  his  pyre,  no  lamentations  ill- 
befitting  ("  Odes,"  21,  29).  Greek  athlete,  Roman  tri- 
umphator,  he  envies  them  not.  The  cascades  of  the 
Anio,  too,  and  the  groves  of  Tibur  may  now  record 
their  Classic  ("Odes,"  4,  3).  At  forty-eight  he  was 
invited  by  Augustus  to  write  the  secular  ode,  to  be 
chanted  by  the  chosen  youth  of  Roman  aristocracy,  in 
the  most  stately  and  conspicuous  manner  imaginable 
(17  B.C.).  Even  a  few  years  before  this  time  he  proudly 
separates  himself  from  the  current  mode  of  spreading 
one's  literary  renown :  he  disdains  public  readings,  he 
scorns  the  practical  good-will  of  the  professional  teachers 
of  Latin  literature  ("  Epist.,"  1,  19,  40).  And  still  all 
this  did  not  console  him  for  the  bitter  thought  of  death. 
In  the  glorification  of  the  futilities  of  the  flesh  he  was 
no  good  reproduction  of  Anacreon.  One  reason  for  that 
persistent  gloom  in  his  verse,  this  absinthe  in  all  the  cup 
of  life,  was  the  fact,  that,  before  thirty -eight,  Horace 
was  a  confirmed  valetudinarian.  Even  in  31  B.C.,  when 
he  was  not  yet  thirty-four,  when  the  operations  leading 
to  Actium  were  in  hand,  he  was  not  strong  (firmua 
parum,  "  Epodes,"  1,16).  Dyspepsia,  with  all  its  at- 
tendant infirmities  even  at  twenty-eight,  seems  to  have 
been  his  complaint  (1  Sat.  5,  7  ;  and  esp.  v.  49).  In 
that  fear  of  disease  (cegrotare  timenti,  1  Epist.  7,  4)  he 
declines  even  the  persistent  invitations  of  Maecenas  him- 
self. He  may  have  been,  at  that  time,  about  forty-two. 
Gone  were  the  robust  lung,  the  black  locks  that  narrowed 
the  forehead,  the  faculty  of  melodious  elocution,  the  very 
faculty  of  hearty  laughing,  the  romance  of  Greek  liber- 
tines, such  as  it  was  (v.  26  sqq.~).  His  winters  were 
spent,  first  at  Baise,  on  that  gulf  of  paradise,  where  he 
would  crouch  in  sunny  nooks  and  read  ("  Epist.,"  1,  7, 
13)  :  later  he  seems  to  have  gone  still  farther  south,  to 


TWO  ROMAN  EPICUREANS  395 

Salernum,  or  Velia,  and  to  have  observed  the  regimen 
of  cool  baths  recommended  by  the  famous  court-physician 
Antonius  Musa  ("Epist.,"  1,  15). 

But  to  return :  when  his  literary  reputation  was  made, 
he  seems  to  have  turned  away  from  versification  after 
Greek  models  with  a  certain  gusto  —  conduct  of  life,  the 
problems  of  ethics  were  thenceforward  the  preference  of 
his  pen.  The  Epicurean  with  his  famous  precept  of  "  Live 
so  that  you  are  not  aware  that  your  life  has  been  lived  " 
(\d6e  /3ioio-a<?)  was  as  one  who  would  stop  his  very  ears 
against  the  ticking  of  Time — curious  wisdom  that  we  should 
steadily  ignore  the  frailty  and  the  transitoriness  of  our  be- 
ing— there  being  no  other.  Still  the  deeper  impulse  of  the 
soul  steadily  got  the  better  of  the  wisdom  of  the  schools. 
At  the  same  time  he  incessantly  censured  the  Roman  itch 
for  craving  and  getting :  the  moralizing  of  some  of  his  Epis- 
tles needs  slight  adjustment  to  fit  a  pulpit  ("Epist.,"  1, 6). 
Maintain  the  equipoise  of  thy  soul :  the  astral  phenomena 
may  be  contemplated  with  unruffled  calm :  why  not  much 
more  so  terrestrial  things  ?  the  wealth  of  Sheba  and  of 
Ind,  the  shows  and  applause  of  public  games,  the  satisfac- 
tion of  political  preferment — what  are  they  ?  Not  true 
boons,  if  they  involve  fear,  fear  that  you  may  lose  them, 
fear  that  the  wheel  of  fortune  may  turn.  The  soul  is  filled 
with  unrest.  The  futility  of  distant  things,  the  reaction  of 
failure  in  creating  the  sense  of  discomfiture :  these  are  evils. 
Folly  to  be  a  collector  or  to  yearn  incessantly  over  plate 
and  rare  objects  of  ancient  art,  to  admire  purple  and  pre- 
cious stones,  to  be  thrilled  (as  an  orator)  when  thousands 
of  eyes  and  ears  hang  upon  your  lips,  folly  to  work  early 
and  late,  a  slave  to  the  feeling  of  annoyance  that  another 
should  be  richer  than  you.  Time  ripens  all :  likewise  it 
buries  all.  You  have  been  a  familiar  figure  in  Agrippa's 
colonnade  or  on  the  Appian  Way.  Still  you  must  go 
where  Numa  went  before  and  good  King  Ancus. 

The  unruffled  soul :  ataraxia,  imperturbable  calm :  it 
is  the  Summum  bonum  of  the  two  great  schools :  you  could 
not  be  concerned  in  one  without  being  at  least  interested 
in  the  other.  But  before  I  turn  to  the  Stoics  and  to 


396  TESTIMONIUM  ANttLE 

Horace's  concern  in  these  noble  antagonists,  I  must  say  a 
few  things  of  our  poet's  and  essayist's  treatment  of  love. 

Throughout  this  book  I  have  brought  forward  this  mat- 
ter but  sparingly,  and  this  little  chiefly  from  a  sense  of 
consistency  and  material  integrity.  There  is  substantially 
nothing  in  the  Roman  lyricist  that  suggests  any  advance- 
ment above  the  coarse  sensuality  of  the  Greeks. 

It  was  a  decaying  civilization  which  would  dignify  Hor- 
ace's erotic  verse  with  even  a  slight  concern  or  with  positive 
admiration.  Later  literary  men  have  coined  concupiscence 
into  belles  lettres — with  more  consummate  purpose:  Hor- 
ace was  not  very  intense.  The  pathos  of  animality  has 
some  fervor  in  Tibullus  and  Propertius,  the,  cooler  lord  of 
the  Sabine  manor  is  in  a  certain  way  lord  of  himself  even 
here.  His  Pyrrha,  Lydia,  Leuconoe,  the  unnamed  beauty 
of  "  Odes,"  1,  16  (Gratidia  ?),  Tyndaris,  Glycera,  Lalage, 
Chloe,  the  girl  from  Thrace,  Lycoris,  Pholoe,  Myrtale, 
Damalis,  golden-haired  Phyllis,  Barine,  Lyce,  Neobule, 
Neaira,  Chloris,  Phryne :  a  cloud  of  names :  Greek  names, 
names  of  libertines,  types  in  the  main,  words  whose  mel- 
lifluous cadence  and  well-defined  quantity  rendered  them 
particularly  convenient  for  metrical  incorporation.  Per- 
sonally, I  believe  that  Horace  simply  tried  to  be  faithful 
to  his  function  as  working  after  his  Greek  models :  and 
the  comely  boys  Ligurinus,  Cyrus,  Gyges,  —  one  of  whom 
among  young  women  could  not  be  discerned  from  such : 
he  treads  after  Sappho,  Anacreon,  Alkaios,  but  we  shiver. 
Likewise  he  pleased,  incidentally,  his  munificent  friend 
Maecenas.  What  manner  of  man  was  this  one  ?  Seneca 
delineates  him  thus:  Maecenas  was  the  paragon  of  soft 
self-indulgence,  restless  and  troubled  about  amours,  at  the 
same  time  often  in  tears  from  the  rebuffs  of  his  wife,  the 
lady  Terentia ;  trying  to  gain  slumber  by  the  sweet  music 
of  his  distant  orchestra — or  lulled  by  cascades  or  wine — 
and  still  sleepless  with  numberless  cares,  tossing  on  pillows 
of  down.  A  man  utterly  unrobust — who,  in  dressing-gown 
and  slippers  (as  we  would  say),  actually  gave  out  the 
military  parole  of  the  day  even  when  acting  as  the  repre- 
sentative of  Augustus.  A  voluptuary  whose  verse  dallied 


TWO  ROMAN  EPICUREANS  397 

with  curly  locks  and  coral  lips — a  womanish  character,  less 
virile  than  the  very  eunuchs  that  attended  upon  him:  his 
style  of  verse  and  phrase  a  symbol  of  his  self-indulgent 
and  flaccid  moral  character,  a  man  of  splendid  natural  en- 
dowment, but  his  vigor  enervated  by  the  great  material 
prosperity  of  his  career,  veritably  emasculated,  says  Sen- 
eca. Once  indeed  he  wrote: 

"  Nor  care  I  for  my  tomb.    Nature  buries  the  forsaken." 

("  Sen.  Ep.,"  92,  35),  but  his  prevailing  humor  was  fear  of 
death  ("Ep.,"  114).  Not  all  Epicureans  were  voluptu- 
aries, but  that  school  was  the  universal  refuge  of  all  who 
sought  academic  palliation  for  self-indulgence  and  lived 
slaves  of  their  senses.  I  consider  it  likely  that  it  was 
largely  Maecenas  whom  Horace  gratified,  in  the  earlier  part 
of  his  literary  career,  by  his  sallies  and  his  satire  directed 
against  Stoicism :  particularly  the  rigid  paradoxes  of  its 
moral  theses.  Thus,  that  paradox  that  all  forms  of  moral 
misdoing  were  alike  or  equally  reprehensible  —  how  easy 
for  a  Horace  to  draw  the  laughter  of  Maecenas  by  clever 
reductio  ad  absurdum!  Or  the  other,  that  that  mysterious 
Ideal,  the  Stoic  "  Sage  "  (whom  all  praised,  but  no  one 
ever  discovered  in  the  flesh)  was  the  incarnation  of  virtue 
and  power,  faculty,  taste  and  all ;  or  this,  that  all  wrong- 
doing was  at  bottom  some  form  of  intellectual,  mental 
disease :  ambition,  greed,  luxury,  superstition,  all  were 
diseases  of  the  mind.  As  life,  however,  as  it  will,  cheap- 
ened the  joys  of  animality,  and  as  the  tomb  drew  nearer, 
it  would  seem  that  the  philosopher  of  the  Sabine  manor 
became  more  of  an  eclectic :  the  positive  and  tonic  side  of 
Stoicism  seems  to  have  appeared  to  him  worthy  of  serious 
regard.  He  read  freely  in  Chrysippus  and  Grantor. 
Freedom  impressed  him  as  a  greater  boon,  even  when 
coupled  with  poverty.  The  defiance  of  a  tyrant,  even  to 
the  point  of  suicide,  appears  in  "  Epist.,"  1,  16,  75  sq. 


There  is  also  a  strain  in  Horatian  letters  which  we  may 
call  the  Augustan  element.     Augustus  employed  the  great 


398  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

diplomatic  talent  and  administrative  ability  of  Msecenas, 
and  rewarded  him  munificently.  But  the  interest  which 
that  emperor  felt  for  our  poet  sprang  from  motives  very 
different  from  those  which  moved  the  Tuscan  minister  of 
state.  The  splendid  verses  denouncing  civil  war  and  the 
spirit  thereof,  "  Epodes,"  16,  are  placed  very  early  by  the 
best  students  of  Horatian  chronology,  say  in  41  B.C., 
the  very  year  after  Philippi.  The  sweetness  of  peace,  the 
blessings  of  a  settled  government,  the  splendid  and  patri- 
otic services  of  Caesar's  heir  —  these  were  themes  utterly 
acceptable  to  a  statesman  who  understood  the  value  of 
public  opinion  more  profoundly  than  the  towering  Julius. 

This  literary  service  in  the  interest  of  the  Augustan  re- 
forms is  particularly  conspicuous  in  the  first  six  odes  of 
the  third  book.  The  crazy  overrefinement  of  material 
luxury  a  great  evil :  vicious  ideals  these  ;  we  must  restore 
the  toughness  and  perseverance  of  ancient  Rome.  The 
family  must  be  reestablished,  the  sacred  character  of 
matrimony,  it  must  be  brought  back.  The  data  of  that 
survey  of  the  achievements  of  the  emperor,  Augustus's  own 
survey,  are  familiar  to  the  world  through  the  Monumentum 
Ancyranum.  Here  I  can  dwell  but  for  a  moment  on  the 
efforts  for  social  regeneration  essayed  by  Augustus :  there 
were  new  statutes  "de  adulteriis  et  pudicitia  "  .  .  .  "  de 
maritandis  ordinibus"  (Suet.,  "Augustus,"  34).  The 
disruption  of  the  marriage  tie,  the  wantonness  of  the 
aristocracy,  the  ease  of  divorce,  the  childlessness  of  the  old 
families,  these  were  indeed  cancerous  ulcers  on  the  body 
politic. 

Horace  has  written  some  very  fine  verses  in  the  support 
of  this  statutory  regeneration  (Cato  of  Utica  might  have 
been  the  author),  but  I  for  my  part  cannot  take  them  very 
seriously.  Neither  Vergil  nor  Horace,  nor  Propertius  nor 
Tibullus  were  married  :  Ovid  was,  but  what  a  mirror  of 
corruption  was  a  great  part  of  his  verse,  and  the  young 
poet  was  all  the  rage,  —  where  the  moral  law  is  not,  the 
dog  will  eat  its  own  vomit,  even  admire  it  in  letters. 

Horace  was  but  a  poor  prophet  of  righteousness  here. 
He  occasionally  avows  his  sensuality  with  a  frankness  and 


TWO  ROMAN  EPICUREANS  399 

unconcern  that  is  startling  to  the  non-pagan  reader.  Adul- 
tery is  very  unwise  and  really  quite  unprofitable.  His 
judgment  is  largely  cynical — "nature  "  excuses  all,  but  why 
not  be  content  with  the  simplest  and  cheapest  satisfaction  ? 
Other  men's  wives?  No.  Don't  you  see  how  fear  and 
dread  must  needs  alternate  with  desire :  you  may  be 
caught  and  fearfully  flogged,  your  fortune,  your  reputation 
irreparably  ruined :  it  does  not  pay.  This,  the  utilitarian 
aspect,  is  the  burden  of  Horatian  monition.  And  why 
not  ?  To  him,  as  to  all  consistent  Epicureans,  there  is  no 
eternal  or  absolute  law  of  right  conduct:  all  laws  of 
society  (there  are  no  others)  were  begotten  out  of  utility: 
bestiality  dominated  primitive  man  (1  Sat.  3,  98  sqq.~): 
they  fought  for  their  acorns  and  for  their  lairs  with  nails 
and  fists,  later  on  with  cudgels,  afterwards  with  more  effi- 
cient arms,  gradually  they  evolved  the  faculty  of  speech. 

It  was  the  sense  of  practical  advantage  that  dictated  or 
suggested  definite  treaties  of  peace,  the  establishment  of 
commonwealths,  the  punishment  of  stealing,  of  robbery, 
of  adultery.  Concupiscence  bred  death  and  misery  before 
Paris  carried  Helen  to  Troy  —  they  fought  to  the  death 
for  their  lust  as  steers  in  the  herd.  Horace  was  not  long 
from  Athens  when  he  thus  versified  the  ethics  of  the 
school. 

The  growing  solitude  of  life,  the  habit  of  introspection 
seems  to  have  led  him,  as  I  suggested  above,  towards  the 
more  spiritual  elements  of  his  own  sect,  and  made  him, 
in  his  maturity,  more  of  an  eclectic  at  least  in  his  valuation 
of  the  nobler  school.  To  sum  up  : 

The  moral  autonomy  of  man,  in  his  determining  his  life 
for  himself,  yielding  to  social  convention  purely  from 
practical  and  civic  considerations  —  there  is  no  appeal  from 
this  settlement  of  one's  own  life.  As  to  cosmic  things  — 
man  is  a  frail  accident  under  the  iron  heel  of  chance  or 
necessity.  Wise  is  he  who  purges  his  heart  from  socially 
forbidden  appetites,  from  covetousness,  from  miserly  self- 
denial  as  well.  Passions  are  the  acids  that  vitiate  the 
vessel  of  the  soul.  Duty  is  a  Stoic  figment.  To  strive 
for  such  a  state  of  being  which  will  best  enhance  or  per- 


400  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

petuate  our  calm  and  the  unruffled  surface  of  soul :  such 
is  the  goal,  such  the  privilege  of  the  wise  man.  Provi- 
dence and  Religion  are  servile  fictions.  Death  ends  all : 
"  Mors  ultima  linea  rerumst." 


It  is  after  all  the  great  consummation.  As  in  a  cameo 
Ancient  Art  often  presents  to  us,  with  exquisite  felicity 
and  truth,  some  beautiful  human  object,  or  figure  of  human 
concern,  so  the  philosopher  of  the  Sabine  manor-farm  has 
often  revealed  his  constant  or  ever  recurrent  sentiment 
or  humor  in  a  few  lines  of  that  puzzling  felicity  (noted 
by  Quintilian),  words  of  limpid  clearness  and  significant 
directness  that  stamp  him  the  world-classic  he  is.  Such 
verses  are  those  of  Ode  2,  3,  in  which  a  very  great  portion 
of  Horace  stands  revealed,  lines  with  which  he  must  bid 
us  farewell:  "A  mind  of  equipoise  remember  thou  to  keep 
when  things  are  stern:  not  otherwise  in  smiling  days,  mind 
kept  from  reckless  jubilation,  my  Dellius  destined  to  die : 
whether  gloomy  wilt  thou  live  in  every  stroke  of  circum- 
stance, or,  on  sequestered  greensward  in  holidays  reclining 
thou'lt  enjoy  thyself  with  Falernian  of  some  rarer  year. 
What  for  do  towering  pine  and  poplar  silvery-white  love 
to  intertwine  their  branches  and  jointly  furnish  hospitable 
shade  ?  What  for  struggles  the  fleet  brook  with  slanting 
current  to  quiver  down  its  course  ?  Hither  bid  them  bring 
the  wines  and  ointments  fragrant,  and  all  too  short-lived 
flowers  of  lovely  rose,  while  fortune  suffers  us  to  do  it,  and 
life's  season,  and  the  black  threads  of  the  sisters  three. 
Thou  wilt  depart  from  woodlands  purchased  together  and 
mansion  and  from  the  villa  which  the  tawny  Tiber  laves, 
—  thou  wilt  depart,  and  riches  reared  on  high  your  heir 
will  take  possession  of,  whether  rich  and  sprung  from 
Argos's  ancient  king  —  it  matters  not —  or  poor,  and  from 
the  humblest  class,  thou  lingerest  under  the  vaulted  sky, 
victim  of  unpitying  Orcus.  We  all  are  forced  to  the  same 
goal :  the  lot  of  all  is  whirled  in  the  urn,  sooner  or  later 
destined  to  come  out,  and  for  eternal  exile  put  us  on 
Charon's  skiff." 


TWO  ROMAN   EPICUREANS  401 

NOTE. —  The  great  services  of  Lachmann  and  of  Munro  devoted 
to  the  text  of  Lucretius  need  no  attestation  from  my  pen.  Lately, 
among  ourselves,  Professor  Merrill  of  California  has  been  very  indus- 
trious in  this  field.  As  to  the  problem  of  Cicero's  "  editing "  of 
Lucretius,  the  present  writer  has  sifted  (American  Philological  Asso- 
ciation, 1897)  the  tradition  with  earnest  circumspection.  I  believe  the 
current  zoological  philosophers  have  enshrined  Lucretius  as  a  fore- 
runner of  their  guild  —  better  say  Democritus,  gentlemen.  Inasmuch 
as  Lucretius  has  written  a  didactic  work  (howbeit  gleaming  with 
streaks  of  genius)  I  will  append  here  some  references  which  may 
prove  useful  to  some  of  my  readers :  Emancipation  of  the  Soul :  6, 
379 ;  1,  921-950 ;  and  the  introductions  of  the  various  books,  espe- 
cially from  the  second  one  forward. 

This  world  not  indestructible,  6,  565;  it  is  young,  5, 324  ;  spontane- 
ous generation,  2,  900  sqq. ;  no  design,  no  teleology,  2,  1048 ;  no  divine 
control,  2,  1090 ;  6,  58 ;  temperaments,  3,  302.  The  physics  of  Im- 
agination, 4,  777.  Mortality  of  Soul,  3,  572;  622.  Anti-platonic 
discourse,  3,  688  ;  776.  Death,  3,  546  ;  828  ;  929,  965 ;  5, 130.  No 
Eternity,  5,  351.  Actual  religion,  4,  1233;  5,  75 ;  1161. 

The  biography  of  Horace  by  Lucian  Miiller  impresses  me  as  inade- 
quate. Sellar  ("  Roman  Poets,"  etc.)  has  contributed  the  best  valua- 
tion of  Horace,  I  believe,  found  in  British  letters.  I  prefer  it  to  that 
of  Ribbeck.  But  valuations  are  not  as  useful  as  data  for  the  reader's 
own  valuation  :  Personal  Ideals  of  Horace,  Carm.  (Odes)  1, 1, 29.  Ep. 
(Epistles)  1,  19,  26,  31.  Ethics :  se  servare,  Ep.  1,  2,  33.  recte  vivere, 
Ep.  1,  2.  41  ;  6,  29.  cor  purum  vitio,  Sat.  2,  3,  213.  sincerum  vas.,  Ep. 
1,  2,  54.  mala  ambitio,  S.  2,  6,  18 ;  74 ;  Ep.  1,  1.  moralizing  on  the 
Homeric  stories,  1,  Ep.  2.  the  vir  bonus,  1,  6,  40.  critique  of  the  trend 
of  Roman  character:  Ep.  1,  1,  65;  6,  31;  47;  17,  33.  Contentment: 
Carm.  1,7;  1,9;  1,26;  2,2;  2,10;  2,11;  2,  18  ;  — 3,  1,  16  ;  Ep.  1,  2, 
47;  12,  4;  14,  43;  2,  1,  180.  Limitation:  Carm.  1,  9,  13;  1,  11;  C. 
2, 11 ;  C.  3,  4,  65 ;  C.  4,  7,  7 ;  Epode  1,  32 ;  Sat.  1,  1,  50 ;  3,  1,  sqq.; 
Ep.  2,  2,  200.  Resemblance  to  Lucretius:  Ep.  1,  11,  11 ;  12,  19,  2,  2, 
175.  1  Sat.  5,  101.  Covetousness  an  evil :  Carm.  2,  2 ;  3,  16,  16 ; 
24.  C.  4,  9,  45.  Sat.  1,  1,  61;  Ep.  1,  2,  37  sqq.;  18,  98;  2,  2,  175. 
Calmness  of  soul  (drapa&z) :  C.  II,  16 ;  III,  1,  37 ;  29,  32  ;  v.  41 ;  C.  IV, 
9,  35.  Ep.  1,  4, 12  ;  1,  6,  1  sqq.,  1, 6,  65  (Mimnermos  censured)  ;  — Ep. 
1,  10,  30 ;  Ep.  1,  11 ;  16, 65 ;  18, 102 ;  112.  No  "  Religion  "  :  Carm.  3. 
29,  56.  Sat.  2,  3,  199 ;  Sat.  1,  9,  70;  Ep.  1,  16, 60.  Ars  Poetica:  392. 
No  Providence :  Carm.  1, 34  ;  C.  2, 13.  Futility  of  Erudition :  C.  1,  28 ; 
Ep.  1,  12,  15.  "  Virtus  " :  C.  3,  1,  16 ;  Ep.  1,  6,  30 ;  17,  41 ;  18,  100.  _ 

The  influence  of  Pindar  in  his  delineation  of  virtus  and  gloria,  in 
Book  4,  is  quite  palpable. 

As  to  my  view  of  his  erotic  verse  I  have  not  much  to  add :  it  is 
clear  that  Leiiconoe  (in  1,  11,  2.  Carm.)  furnishes  the  desired  choriam- 
bus,  that  Neobule  (in  C.  3, 12)  furnishes  the  desired  metrical  unit,  the 
lonicus  a  minore.  "  Ex  ungue  leonem."  It  was  no  slight  task  to  gratify 
two  patrons  whose  concerns  were  as  unlike  as  those  of  Augustus  and 
those  of  Maecenas. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

L.  ANNJEUS  SENECA,  THE  VERSATILE,  AND  THE  ROME  OF 

SENECA 

THE  sovereign  Tiber  city  first  subdued  the  entire  pe- 
riphery of  the  Mediterranean  world.  Later,  the  provinces 
in  many  ways  reinvigorated  their  effete  mistress.  In  this 
respect  Spain  was  particularly  conspicuous.  Corduba 
thus  replenished  Rome  :  the  elder  Seneca,  his  three  sons, 
Novatus,  Lucius,  Mela,  his  grandson  Lucan,  all  bore  that 
double  relation :  viz.,  of  provincial  origin  and  of  Roman 
fame.  Better  call  them  Spanish  Romans  rather  than 
Roman  Spaniards. 

Of  these  three  generations,  the  middle  one  will  always 
be  most  prominent,  and  of  the  three  gifted  brothers, 
Lucius  Annseus  Seneca  is  almost  universally  familiar  to 
the  general  consciousness  of  our  own  civilization;  the 
smallest  cyclopedia  includes  his  name.  At  first  blush,  he 
would  seem  a  brilliant  man,  dazzling  two  generations,  re- 
puted a  universal  genius,  his  life  and  the  consummate 
worldliness  of  an  extraordinary  career  in  violent  contrast 
with  the  ideals  and  the  morality  of  his  prose  works.  He 
was  fond  of  pungent  and  prickly  qualities  in  his  style  — 
he  had  a  horror  of  flatness  and  commonplace  utterance,  a 
morbid  aversion  to  the  dispassionate  and  equable  manner. 
No  greater  contrast  in  the  entire  range  of  recorded  Roman 
prose-utterance  than  between  Varro  on  the  one  hand,  and 
Seneca  on  the  other. 

I  am  inclined  to  make  his  birth  antedate  by  a  few  years 
that  of  the  Founder  of  the  Christian  religion.  Seneca, 
himself  the  son  of  a  wonderful  father,  could  recall  the 
habits  of  Asinius  Pollio  (d.  5  A.D.).  He  thus  saw  the 
last  part  of  the  reign  of  Augustus :  lived  through  that  of 

402 


L.  ANN^US  SENECA,  THE  VERSATILE  403 

Tiberius,  Caligula,  Claudius  —  :  helped  direct  the  earlier 
administration  of  his  pupil  Nero,  and  died  a  consistent 
Stoic  in  the  Pisonian  conspiracy,  65  A.D.  In  his  father's 
power  was  the  entire  range  of  the  rhetorical  schools  of 
Rome  —  the  father's  virtuosity  in  the  reproduction  of  the 
different  virtuosi  must  always  stand  as  an  astounding  feat 
of  that  immersion  of  self  in  the  personality  of  others  which 
far  exceeds  mere  mnemotechnique.  As  a  child  he  was  in 
Egypt :  a  husband  of  his  mother's  sister  for  a  time  ruled 
that  rich  province.  Egyptian  investments  figured  in  the 
wealth  of  his  declining  years.  He  describes  the  cataracts 
of  the  Nile.  What,  at  Rome,  grammaticus  or  rhetor  could 
do  for  him  was  probably  soon  outdone  by  his  exceptional 
endowment  for  literary  production,  be  it  in  prose  or 
verse. 

Among  his  philosophical  teachers  in  Rome,  he  mentions 
Attains,  Sotion,  Fabianus.  In  the  classroom  of  the  first 
named  young  Seneca  was  the  first  to  appear,  the  last  to 
leave.  Even  on  walks  the  youth  attended  the  professor, 
who  met  such  eagerness  half-way  ("  Epist.,"  108,  3). 
The  teacher's  favorite  sayings  sank  deep  into  his  soul  and 
furnished  him  quotation.  Attalus  was  a  Stoic  and  was 
wont  to  say :  "  I  would  rather  have  Fortune  use  me  as  its 
soldier  than  as  its  darling  "  ("  Ep.,"  67,  15).  We  may  say 
that  the  moral  influence  of  this  teacher  on  the  young 
genius  was  greater  than  the  academic, — perhaps  these 
two,  however,  should  never  be  dissevered.  This  Greek 
scholar,  I  say,  was  a  Stoic,  not  merely  one  of  erudition, 
but  such  a  one  to  whom  that  school  furnished  both  skele- 
ton and  sinews  and  muscle  of  life  and  living :  professor 
and  confessor  both  of  a  creed  which  to  the  young  pupil 
seemed  to  elevate  the  austere  and  honored  man  above  the 
common  humanity  about  him.  We  see  in  Seneca's  remi- 
niscent lines  what  your  consistent  Stoic  really  was :  he 
was  —  he  claimed  to  be  —  a  king  ("  Ep.,"  108,  13).  He 
shared  not  in  the  current  valuations  of  men :  his  goal  and 
aim  differed  from  that  of  the  others  —  :  wealth,  pleasures, 
notoriety,  his  soul  was  emancipated  from  these.  And 
he  actually  attacked  the  world  in  which  he  lived  —  he 


404  TESTIMONIUM  ANIJVLE 

exposed  the  hollowness  of  the  prevailing  pleasure-cult,  he 
lauded  poverty,  he  praised  chastity,  he  commended  tem- 
perance —  he  furnished  standards  which  really  antago- 
nized those  current.  Clearly  he  was,  in  a  way,  a  spiritual 
power.  A  certain  asceticism  of  simpler  living  endured 
in  Seneca  from  these  earlier  influences :  he  persistently 
avoided  the  fashionable  ointments,  the  warm  baths  —  he 
was  to  his  old  age  addicted  to  the  regimen  of  cold  baths, 
he  was  a  "  psychroluta  "  — he  discarded  delicacies  such  as 
oysters  and  mushrooms.  His  other  Greek  teacher  of 
philosophy,  Sotion,  filled  him  with  admiration  for  certain 
things  in  the  Pythagorean  creed.  The  youth  actually, 
for  a  while,  became  a  vegetarian  — :  that  respect  for  the 
universal  kinship  of  life  ("  Ep.,"  108, 19),  the  migration  of 
it  into  lower  forms,  these  things  impressed  young  Seneca 
greatly.  He  persevered  in  the  new  diet  a  full  year,  and 
was  well  pleased  with  his  experience.  This  was  under 
Tiberius.  His  father,  a  Roman  of  the  old  stamp,  with 
ideals  of  the  old  republic,  "hated  philosophy."  Besides, 
under  Tiberius,  at  one  time  foreign  cults  were  put  under 
a  ban  of  state :  some  of  these  eschewed  animal  food. 
Thus  a  father's  interference  as  well  as  worldly  prudence 
weaned  the  young  enthusiast  from  these  Pythagorean 
habits.  His  Roman  teacher  of  philosophy,  Fabianus,  had 
gone  forward  from  the  academic  teaching  of  language  and 
literature  to  Stoicism.  He  was  not  one  of  those  "  lecture 
room  academic  philosophers  "  (ex  his  cathedrariis  philoso- 
phis,  "  De  Brevitate  vitee,"  10,  1),  but  of  the  genuine  and 
old-fashioned  ones.  He  was  wont  to  say  that  against 
passions  the  fight  must  be  conducted  by  onslaught,  not 
by  mere  refinement  of  cogitation :  not  by  pin-pricks,  but 
by  a  general  charge  on  the  double-quick  must  the  battle 
front  of  wickedness  be  turned  into  flight.  At  an  early 
age  the  young  genius  reflected  on  suicide :  he  suffered 
severely  from  catarrh,  consumption  seemed  to  be  impend- 
ing. The  thought  of  his  old  father's  gray  hairs  restrained 
him  then  from  self-destruction  ("Ep.,"  78,  2).  The 
brilliancy,  certainly  the  technical  perfection  of  his  verse, 
gave  him  what  we  may  call  an  imperial  reputation.  As 


L.  ANNvEUS  SENECA,  THE  VERSATILE  405 

an  old  man,  in  surveying  his  career,  lie  often  seems  to 
have  ignored  this  part  of  his  achievements.  He  com- 
manded (as  his  tragedies  show)  the  entire  range  of  lyric 
versification  —  still  the  lyrics'  essential  theme,  the  debase- 
ment of  erotic  passion,  he  seems  to  have  consistently 
eschewed.  He  grasped  all  addition  to  his  cultural  equip- 
ment with  a  certain  intensity,  in  which  deep  feeling  was 
curiously  blended  with  keen  comprehension.  As  an  old 
man  he  says  of  the  lyric  writers:  "illi  ex  professo  lascivi- 
unt  "  —  wantonness  is  their  stated  theme.  His  Stoic  sub- 
stratum of  incipient  maturity  was  not  shallow.  Soon 
also  he  was  preeminent  among  the  pleaders  at  the  Roman 
bar,  and  subsequently  through  this  door  entered  the 
senate.  Under  Caligula  (37-41  A.D.)  Seneca  was  con- 
sidered the  paragon  of  letters,  the  foremost  orator,  also,  of 
Rome.  The  rapid  sequence  of  Seneca's  points  and  thrusts 
was  the  mode :  the  imperial  pervert  Caligula  uttered  a 
clever  judgment  (preserved  by  Sueton.,  "  Calig.,"  53)  : 
viz.,  Seneca  was  "sand  without  the  binding  lime."  The 
young  emperor  (son  of  the  literary  Germanicus)  was  con- 
sumed with  malignant  jealousy  of  Seneca :  the  latter 
would  have  been  destroyed  had  not  Caligula  learned  from 
a  concubine  that  the  senator  was  far  gone  with  consump- 
tion ;  thus  the  imperial  critic  withdrew  his  concern  (Dio 
Cassius,  59,  19). 

From  the  accession  of  Claudius,  41  to  49  A.D.,  our  phi- 
losopher-courtier lived  in  exile,  in  Corsica.  The  empress 
Messalina  was  bitterly  jealous  of  the  beauty  and  influence 
which  the  princess  Julia  had  with  her  imperial  uncle,  the 
erudite  imbecile  Claudius.  The  charge  of  forbidden  re- 
lations with  the  brilliant  man  of  letters  was  directed  at 
Julia  and  believed  by  the  uxorious  Claudius. 

These  were  bitter  years  for  Seneca.  Was  fame  and 
reputation,  was  the  loss  of  these  fortuitous  externals  of  life 
really  so  slight  a  concern  for  the  soul  of  the  Stoic  ? 
"  Awful  Corsica,"  he  wrote  then  ("  Epigrammata  super 
Exilio"),  "  when  summer's  heat  is  established;  more  cruel, 
when  the  savage  dogstar  appears.  Spare  thou  the  ban- 
ished ones,  that  is,  spare  now  the  buried  ones  :  may  thy 


406  TESTEVIONIUM  ANBLE 

soil  be  light  for  the  ashes  of  the  living."  He  consoles 
himself  by  recalling  the  paragraph  of  his  sect  that  the 
universe  itself  one  day  will  perish.  "  A  law  it  is,  not  a 
penalty,  to  perish  :  this  universe  one  day  will  be  no  more." 
His  reminiscent  glance  is  directed  at  his  birthplace,  Cor- 
duba.  He  calls  on  her  to  dishevel  her  locks  and  weep  and 
to  send  funeral  gifts  for  the  ashes  of  her  greatest  son.  To 
the  Spaniards  Seneca  was  the  renowned  poet  (vates).  To 
his  own  consciousness  the  exile  is  now  as  one  departed 
from  life,  again  he  is  a  new  Prometheus  pinned  to  the 
rock  —  (infigar  scopulo).  But  the  suffering  Stoic  must 
be  defiant  and  proud,  not  humble  and  submissive.  As  an 
old  man  ("  Naturales  Quce*tiones  prcefatio"  4,  14  s q. )  he 
penned  this  haughty  survey  of  his  earlier  career:  "  I  de- 
voted myself  to  liberal  studies.  Although  poverty  sug- 
gested a  different  course  and  my  native  powers  were  lead- 
ing me  to  a  sphere  of  life  where  zeal  receives  an  immedi- 
ate reward,  I  turned  aside  to  non-productive  verse  and  I 
went  into  the  wholesome  pursuit  of  philosophy.  I  showed 
that  excellence  (virtus)  may  lodge  in  every  breast,  and 
struggling  with  mighty  effort  (eluetatus)  out  of  the  nar- 
row confines  of  my  birth,  measuring  myself  not  by  the  lot 
of  fortune,  but  by  the  aspirations  of  my  own  soul,  I  ac- 
quired a  station  equal  to  the  greatest "  (par  maximis  steti). 
It  seems  that  both  when  he  faced  the  hatred  of  Caligula 
as  well  as  when  he  became  a  victim  of  Messalina  and 
Narcissus,  he  could  have  bettered  his  lot  or  utterly  es- 
caped from  trouble,  if  he  could  have  prevailed  upon  him- 
self to  become  disloyal  to  certain  friends  (Julia?).  "I 
permitted  no  womanish  tears  to  flow,  I  did  not  as  a  sup- 
pliant wring  the  hands  of  any  one."  Unfortunately,  this 
is  not  exact,  I  am  afraid  it  is  not  even  true.  For  we 
have  the  composition  addressed  from  out  of  his  exile  to 
the  freedman  Polybius,  one  of  the  favorites  of  Claudius. 
There  are  noble  passages  in  it  —  the  larger  view  of  the 
universe,  of  human  history,  struggles  in  him  to  reduce  or 
eliminate  the  sense  of  his  own  suffering:  still  the  flatteries 
aimed  indirectly  at  Claudius  himself  are  penned  with  the 
consummate  skill  of  the  courtier,  are  projected  with  the 


L.  ANN^US  SENECA,  THE  VERSATILE  407 

clever  and  tactful  calculation  of  a  man  of  the  world  — 
everything  to  terminate  this  exile. 

In  49  A.D.  Seneca  was  recalled  to  Rome.  How  he 
served  the  ambition  of  Agrippina,  who  married  her  father's 
brother  Claudius,  how  he  became  the  educator  and  adviser 
of  young  Nero,  how  he  rejoiced  in  the  death  of  the  hated 
imperial  fool  —  whether  he  was  privy  to  the  poisoned 
mushroom  or  not  —  how  he  composed  state  papers  for  his 
imperial  pupil  after  an  accession  deeply  stained  with 
criminal  intrigue,  how  he  manoeuvred  against  the  reck- 
less ambition  of  the  dowager,  how  he  knew  of  the  matri- 
cidal  project,  and  how  again  his  pen  was  used  to  palliate 
and  defend  that  crime  of  crimes  —  the  data  are  set  forth 
with  merciless  precision  by  Tacitus,  by  Suetonius,  by  Dio. 
It  is  all  a  very  sad  story.  Nero  would  gratify  his  appe- 
tites, he  would  —  shallow  fool  he  was  —  parade  as  a  great 
singer,  a  great  virtuoso  of  musical  skill,  a  great  charioteer 
—  the  impossible,  the  shocking,  the  atrocious,  it  allured 
his  ill-balanced  soul:  lust,  vanity,  frivolity,  the  wanton 
gratification  of  every  whim;  in  short,  the  evil  in  him  was 
reared  to  giant  proportions  by  the  power  of  the  principate. 
The  proud  Stoic  and  exemplar  of  noblest  culture,  Seneca, 
had  to  yield  his  place  of  counsel  and  influence  to  the  vul- 
gar Tigellinus,  a  favorite  of  the  imperial  showman  who 
quickened  all  the  evil  and  folly  that  fermented  in  Nero's 
soul.  About  this  time,  in  62  A.D.,  as  an  old  man,  Seneca 
began  the  composition  of  those  moral  or  academic  essays, 
slightly  adjusted  to  the  epistolary  form,  the  eputulce 
morales  compositions  which  reveal  the  range  of  this  ex- 
traordinary man,  which  contain  his  best  thoughts. 

But  before  we  make  some  study  of  the  latter,  we  must 
turn  to  the  problem  of  Seneca's  great  wealth.  In  a  cer- 
tain defence,  put  into  the  mouth  of  a  senator  who  hated 
Seneca  bitterly,  the  charge  is  made  that  Seneca  had  ac- 
cumulated ter  milies  sestertium,  i.e.  three  hundred  million 
sesterces.  Reduced  to  our  present  standard,  this  would 
have  been  about  thirteen  million  two  hundred  thousand 
dollars,  in  our  money.  This  charge  is  cited  by  Tacitus 
(Annals,  13,  42)  among  the  events  of  the  year  58.  He 


408  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

was  charged  (z'J.)  with  cunning  devices  of  having  wills 
made  by  childless  people  in  his  favor.  Entire  provinces 
paid  him  usurious  interest.  Dio  indeed  relates  for  the 
year  61  A.D.  (b.  62,  2)  that  the  troubles  in  Britain  were 
partly  due  to  the  fact  that  Seneca,  without  previous  notice, 
called  in  a  tremendous  fund  which  he  had  loaned  out  in 
that  province.  This  was  the  time  of  the  famous  rising  of 
Queen  Budicca.  To  be  sane  and  reserve  one's  judgment 
seems  doubly  necessary  here.  "  Guilty  intrigues  with 
Agrippina  "  ("  Dio,"  61,  10) :  it  was  the  world's  way  of 
interpreting  his  earlier  influence. 

It  is  further  utterly  absurd  to  make  Seneca  responsible 
for  the  monstrosities  of  his  pupil's  career  —  still  flatteries 
of  Claudius's  freedmen  must  stand.  "  While  censuring 
the  rich"  (Dio  proceeds)  "  he  acquired  an  estate  of  75,000,- 
000  (i.e.  drachmas,  =  $13,500,000  in  our  money)  and 
while  accusing  the  luxuries  of  the  others,  he  possessed  five 
hundred  small  tables  of  citrus  wood  with  ivory  feet."  Of 
more  outrageous  charges  I  will  be  silent.  I  do  not  believe 
them.  The  dazzling  fortune  of  the  Spanish  professor's 
son  would  have  raised  up  against  him  a  host  of  envy  and 
malice  had  he  been  an  Epicurean:  the  stern  preaching  of 
Stoic  sermons  doubled  and  trebled  the  venom  of  his  critics. 
The  preface  to  "  Nat.  Qucest."  c.  4,  was  certainly  writ- 
ten some  years  after  58  (when  his  wealth,  as  I  showed, 
was  attacked  in  a  session  of  the  senate).  His  reference 
to  money  is  proud  and  defiant:  "Add  now  a  spirit  invin- 
cible by  gifts  and,  amid  so  great  a  struggle  of  greed,  a 
hand  never  hollowed  under  bribeiy.  Add  now  the  fru- 
gality of  my  style  of  living:  towards  the  younger,  hu- 
manity, towards  the  elder,  respect.  ..." 


But  we  must  take  up  the  chief  concern  of  this  chapter. 
Surely  Seneca  was  in  himself  a  microcosm  of  the  nobler  ele- 
ments of  the  humanity  of  the  Roman  world  in  the  Clau- 
dian  emperors'  time.  It  is  wonderful,  too,  how  closely,  on 
the  whole,  he  avoided  the  very  grazing  or  slightest  touch- 
ing on  political  or  governmental  matters.  The  inner 


L.  ANN^US  SENECA,  THE  VERSATILE  409 

Seneca,  and  the  outward  —  which  is  it  ?  But  really,  was 
not  the  inner  Seneca  turned  outward  in  these  brilliant 
essays  ? 

To  him  his  philosophy  is  not  a  mere  decoration  or 
academic  gown  :  "  Philosophy  is  not  in  words  but  in 
things.  Nor  is  it  applied  to  this  end,  that  the  day  may 
be  spent  with  a  certain  feeling  of  entertainment,  that 
leisure  be  deprived  of  tedium :  it  moulds  and  works  the 
mind,  sketches  a  plan  for  life,  directs  actions,  points  out 
what  is  to  be  done,  what  left  undone  ;  it  sits  at  the  helm 
and  steers  the  course  through  the  dangers  of  floating  ob- 
jects "  ("Ep.,"16,  3).  "It  is  doing,  which  philosophy 
teaches  us,  and  this  it  demands  that  every  one  should 
live  by  its  law,  that  life  be  not  in  disharmony  with 
speech"  ("Ep.,"  20,  2).  Philosophers,  indeed,  are  ex- 
posed to  the  current  charge  that  they  are  hypocritical, 
that  they  produce  phrases,  not  works.  The  parasite's 
greed,  lusting  after  women,  gluttony  :  with  these  things 
are  they  upbraided  ("Ep.,"  29,  5).  Seneca  is  hostile  to 
mere  erudition  :  the  dialectical  micrology  of  the  Older 
Stoa  he  often  belittles  ("Ep.,"  82,  8  ;  83,  9  ;  85  ;  87,  12). 
Ill  do  those  philosophers  deserve  of  mankind,  who  have 
learned  philosophy  as  though  it  were  a  professional  at- 
tainment which  may  be  sold,  who  live  differently  from 
the  rules  which  they  lay  down  for  living.  .  .  .  All  they 
say,  all  they  boastfully  utter  while  their  crowded  lecture- 
room  listens,  is  the  production  of  others  :  Plato  said  that 
before,  Zeno  did,  Chrysippus  and  Posidonius  did:  how 
can  they  prove  that  that  vast  parade  is  their  own  ?  I  will 
tell  you  :  let  them  do  what  they  say  .  .  .  ("  Ep.,"  108, 
36  sqq.  ;  109,  17).  Sciolism  is  unprofitable:  "subtlety 
is  ground  out  in  superfluous  things  :  those  things  make 
not  good  men,  but  learned  men  "  ("  Ep.,"  106,  11).  The 
actual  practice  is  all  wrong  :  "  for  the  school,  not  for  life 
do  we  learn"  ("Ep.,"  106,  12). 

But  let  us  go  on  to  that  which  is  the  directing,  the 
tonic,  element  in  this  body  of  wisdom.  To  me,  if  I  may 
make  a  personal  avowal,  few  elements  of  classic  tradition 
are  as  interesting  as  these  revelations  of  attitude  :  some' 


410  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

times  merely  the  paragraph  of  academic  tradition,  but 
more  frequently  a  personal  fervor  and  an  intensity  com- 
parable to  an  utterance  of  faith. 

And  first  we  will  hear  Seneca  on  the  Universe. 

"  It  is  superfluous  at  the  moment  ("  De  Providential  1, 
2)  to  point  out  that  not  without  some  guardian  so  great 
a  work  stands,  and  that  this  assemblage  of  constellations 
and  their  various  separate  orbits  are  not  of  fortuitous  im- 
pulse, and  that  those  things  which  chance  propels  are 
often  thrown  into  disorder  and  quickly  collide,  that  this 
non-colliding  velocity  goes  forward  by  the  orders  of 
eternal  law.  ..."  "It  is  a  noble  consolation  to  be 
whirled  away  with  the  Universe  ("cum  universe  rapi"). 
Whatever  it  may  be,  that  has  bidden  us  so  to  live,  so  to  die, 
by  the  same  necessity  does  it  bind  even  the  gods  "  (16.,  5, 
8).  (He  means  by  "gods"  the  regular  and  recurrent 
phenomena  of  nature  and  physical  life  :  "  gods "  is  a 
phrase  of  accommodation  to  popular  speech).  "  Foolish 
and  ignorant  of  truth  they  charge  against  them  ("  the 
gods ")  the  rudeness  of  the  sea,  the  excessive  freshets, 
the  stubbornness  of  winter.  .  .  .  For  not  we  are  the 
cause  for  the  world  (mundo'),  of  its  bringing  back  winter 
and  summer  :  those  things  have  their  own  laws,  by  which 
divine  things  are  kept  in  action.  We  conceive  too  high 
a  regard  for  ourselves,  if  we  seem  to  ourselves  to  be 
worthy  that  for  our  sakes  so  great  things  be  set  in  mo- 
tion "  ("  De  Ira"  2,  27,  2).  This  physical  Universe  is  to 
be  destroyed  some  day :  "  Nothing  will  stand  in  the  place 
in  which  it  now  stands;  old  age  will  level  and  carry  away 
everything.  And  not  with  men  only  (and  how  tiny  a  por- 
tion of  that  chance  power  is  humanity  ?)  but  with  places, 
but  with  countries,  but  with  parts  of  the  world  will  it 
make  its  sport.  So  many  mountains  will  it  smother,  and 
elsewhere  force  upward  new  rocks.  Oceans  will  it  suck  in, 
rivers  it  will  turn  from  their  courses,  and  having  snapped 
asunder  the  intercourse  of  nations,  it  will  dissolve  the 
society  and  assemblage  of  human  kind  "  ("Ad  Marciam" 
26,  6).  "  This  Universe  some  day  will  scatter  and  will 
sink  it  into  ancient  intermingling  of  elements  and  pri- 


L.  ANN^EUS  SENECA,  THE  VERSATILE  411 

meval  night "  {"AdPolybium"  1, 2).  "That sequence  has 
been  given  the  Universe,  that  it  appears  that  a  concern 
for  us  has  been  rated  not  among  the  last  things  "  ("Zte 
Beneficiis"  6,  23,  4).  The  old  Stoics  believed  in  periodic 
resolving  of  the  organic  universe  through  heat  —  this  is 
found  frequently  in  Seneca.  Still  he  holds  there  may 
come  also  a  cosmic  dissolution  through  water,  a  new  del- 
uge :  "whether  it  be  done  through  the  force  of  ocean 
and  in  the  end  the  deep  rise  upon  us,  or  whether  incessant 
showers  and  the  stuff  of  winter,  moved  by  summer  cast 
down  a  measureless  body  of  waters  from  the  burst  clouds, 
or,"  etc. — much  of  this  seems  to  have  been  drawn  from 
Posidonius. 

But  leaving  alone  these  cosmic  and  scientific  specula- 
tions, there  is  met  with  in  Seneca  —  over  and  over  again 
—  a  different  aspect  of  the  Universe,  which  concerns  and 
interests  us  much  more.  We  now  come  upon  those  tenets 
which  I  believe  are  the  very  bone  and  sinew  of  that  nobler 
school,  tenets  where  Stoicism  is  most  widely  removed  from 
the  hopeless  materialism  of  Epicurean  belief.  And  I  will 
firmly  abstain  from  two  things:  from  summing  up  for  the 
reader  what  has  not  been  properly  presented  to  him,  and 
from  putting  on  Seneca  a  few  modern  labels  before  we 
have  fairly  comprehended  his  thought :  both  are  faults  to 
which  the  academic  person  greatly  inclines. 

In  the  first  place :  "  Nature  "  in  Seneca  is  vastly  more 
than  the  aggregation  of  matter  both  organic  and  inorganic, 
its  properties,  its  life  and  dissolution,  its  varied  phenomena. 
Frequently  does  our  author  endow  the  universe  with  pur- 
pose, aim,  design.  "  Nature  thought  us,  before  she  made 
us,  nor  are  we  so  slight  a  work  that  we  could  have  slipped 
merely  from  her  hands  of  craftsmanship.  See  how  far 
bodies  are  permitted  to  roam,  which  she  has  not  restrained 
by  mere  geographical  limitations,  but  has  sent  into  every 
part  of  herself.  See  how  great  is  the  daring  of  spirits, 
how  they  alone  either  know  the  gods  or  seek  after  them 
and  attend  divine  things  with  an  intellect  directed  upon 
lofty  things :  you  will  know  that  man  is  not  a  work  made 
in  a  hurry  and  without  reflection.  Among  her  greatest 


412  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

achievements  Nature  has  nothing  of  which  she  boasts 
more  or  assuredly  to  whom  she  more  addresses  her  boasts  " 
—  a  profound  and  noble  sentiment.  —  ("  De  JBenef.,"  6,  23, 
6-7).  "  Whosoever  was  he  that  moulded  the  universe 
(formator  universi),  whether  he  is  that  god  powerful  over 
all,  or  immaterial  reason,  workman  of  the  huge  works,  or 
a  divine  spirit  permeating  (diffusus)  all  things,  greatest 
and  smallest  with  equal  force,  or  Fate  and  the  immutable 
sequence  of  mutually  connected  causes."  .  .  .  We  see 
him  pause  for  terms  and  language  ("Ad  Helviam  Matrem" 
8,  3).  Elsewhere  he  utters  the  same  thought  with  slight 
variation :  "  For  what  else  is  Nature  but  God  and  the 
divine  reason  injected  into  the  whole  world  and  its  parts? 
.  .  .  Him  likewise  if  you  will  identify  with  Fate,  you 
will  utter  no  falsehood,  for  inasmuch  as  fate  is  nothing 
else  but  the  entwined  chain  of  causes  (series  implexa  causa- 
rum)  he  (ille)  is  the  first  cause  of  all,  from  which  the  rest 
are  dependent"  (" De  Benef."  4,  7,  1-2).  "Therefore 
thy  efforts  are  futile,  thou  most  ungrateful  of  mortals, 
who  deniest,  that  you  owe  to  God,  but  to  Nature:  be- 
cause neither  is  God  without  Nature,  nor  God  without 
Nature,  but  both  are  the  same,  it  differs  in  function.  If 
you  were  to  say,  that  you  owed  to  Annseus  or  to  Lucius, 
what  you  had  received  from  Seneca,  you  would  not  change 
the  creditor  but  the  name  .  .  .  thus  now  call  it  Nature, 
Fate,  Fortune  —  all  are  names  of  the  same  god  who  uses 
his  own  power  in  different  ways.  And  justice,  moral-good- 
ness, prudence,  bravery,  frugality,  are  boons  of  a  single  soul : 
whichever  of  these  has  been  pleasing  to  you,  the  soul  is 
pleasing  "  ($.,  8,  2-3).  "Not  even  did  they  believe,  that 
Jupiter,  such  as  we  worship  on  the  Capitol  and  in  the  other 
temples,  the  pilot  and  guardian  of  the  universe,  the  soul 
and  spirit  of  the  world,  the  lord  and  creator  of  this  work, 
whom  every  name  befits.  Do  you  wish  to  call  him  Fate: 
you  will  not  err.  It  is  he,  from  whom  all  things  depend,  the 
cause  of  causes  (causa  causarum).  Do  you  wish  to  call 
him  Providence:  you  will  rightly  call  him  so.  For  it  is  he, 
through  whose  counsel  provision  is  made  for  this  world,  so 
that  it  passes  through  its  motion  without  collision  and 


L.  ANN^EUS  SENECA,   THE  VERSATILE  413 

unfolds  its  own  actions.  Do  you  wish  to  call  him  Nature: 
you  will  not  sin.  It  is  he  from  whom  all  things  are  born 
(nata  sunf),  by  whose  breath  we  live.  Do  you  wish  to  call 
him  the  world  (mundum) :  you  will  not  be  deceived " 
("  Nat.  Qucest.,"  2,  45,  1-2).  We  could  call  him  a  deist, 
a  pantheist:  nothing  would  be  gained  by  these  labels. 
Now  it  seems,  Seneca  also  wrote  a  "  Dialogue  on  Supersti- 
tion," now  lost,  a  book  amply  authenticated  for  us,  not 
only  by  Tertullian  and  St.  Augustine,  but  also  by  Diomedes 
Grammaticus  (Keil,  Vol.  1,  p.  379,1,19).  Particularly  is 
it  the  great  bishop  of  Hippo  who  studied  this  treatise  — 
saying  also  that  the  philosopher  displayed  in  his  writings 
a  freedom  ("De  Oivitate  Dei,"  6,  10)  which  was  absent 
from  his  life.  The  keen  mind  of  St.  Augustine  readily 
discriminated  between  three  forms  of  theology  found  in 
the  classical  world:  mythological,  civil,  natural,  the  latter 
being  the  religion  of  the  philosophers.  Now,  whereas 
Varro  spared  not  the  mythological  form,  he  abstained 
from  censuring  that  of  the  commonwealth.  Seneca  seems 
to  have  attacked  the  latter  with  great  freedom.  He  spoke 
in  that  essay  of  the  dreams  of  T.  Tatius  or  Romulus  or 
Tullus  Hostilius,  their  inventions  :  Cloacina,  Picus  and 
Tiberinus,  Pavor  and  Pallor.  Absurd  divinities.  Seneca 
sharply  reprimanded  self-torture  (as  practised  in  the  wor- 
ship of  the  Phrygian  goddess,  I  suppose  he  means). 

But  in  the  same  essay  Seneca  spoke  with  contempt  of 
actual  Roman  worship :  "  I  went  to  the  Capitol :  I  will 
blush  for  the  folly  practised  in  broad  daylight.  One  sup- 
plies the  god  with  appellations,  another  reports  the 
hours  to  Jupiter;  one  is  beadle,  another  anointer,  who, 
with  a  meaningless  movement  of  his  arm,  imitates  an 
anointing  one.  There  are  those  who  make  up  the  hair 
for  Juno  and  Minerva  —  (standing  far  from  the  temple, 
not  merely  from  the  effigy,  they  move  their  fingers  in  the 
fashion  of  those  engaged  in  hair-dressing) — there  are  those 
that  hold  the  mirror:  there  are  those  that  summon  the  gods 
to  their  own  bail-bonds,  there  are  those  that  hold  up  briefs  to 
them  and  expound  their  law-case  to  them.  A  learned  chief- 
pantomime,  an  old  man  already,  of  mere  skin  and  bones, 


414  TESTIMONIUM 

daily  was  going  through  his  dumb-show  on  the  Capitol, 
as  though  the  gods  gazed  upon  him  with  pleasure,  whom 
human  beings  had  ceased  to."  ..."  Certain  females  sit 
on  the  Capitol  who  think  they  are  the  object  of  Jupiter's 
amatory  desires:  not  even  by  regard  for  Juno  —  so  wrath- 
ful, if  you  would  believe  the  poets  —  are  they  repelled." 
Still  Seneca  was  a  conformist  on  stated  occasions  ...  it 
was  to  him  a  civil  obligation  of  Rome. 

But  to  return  to  Seneca's  Nature,  God,  World,  Universe, 
Providence,  or  Fate.  You  cannot  pray  to  it :  it  is  not 
swayed  by  prayer.  But  you  can  be  in  harmony  with  it, 
live  conformably  to  it,  follow  it.  For  you  may  think  little 
of  your  utter  littleness  in  the  realm  of  matter  and  in  the 
mighty  movements  and  periodic  recurrences  of  phenomena 
in  the  physical  world :  —  still  the  question  as  to  your 
spiritual  and  moral  conformity  is  great,  it  is  the  prime 
concern  of  your  life.  That  Nature  and  Universe  wills 
our  goodness.  God  speaks  thus  to  men  :  "  To  you 
have  I  given  definite  boons,  destined  to  abide,  better 
and  greater,  the  more  one  will  turn  them  over  and  over 
and  examine  them  from  all  sides.  I  have  permitted  you 
to  despise  fearful  things,  to  treat  the  appetites  with  dis- 
dain. You  do  not  gleam  outwardly,  your  boons  are 
turned  inward.  Thus  the  Universe  despised  outward 
things,  blessed  in  gazing  upon  itself "  ("Z>e  Provid." 
6,  5).  This  noble  ideal  then  of  a  Nature  or  Universal 
Design  to  which  man  must  submit  —  is  the  ancient 
doctrine  of  Zeno  and  Kleanthes.  Curiously  that  Nature 
—  or  God  —  earnestly  desires  that  we  be  emancipated 
from  the  very  bonds  and  burthens  of  matter  which  human 
kind  has  generally  called  "  Nature."  Man  is  the  only 
creature  which  can  conceive  of  that  Universal  order  — :  is 
it  not  shallow  to  forego  the  conclusion  that  this  faculty  of 
appreciation  in  man  is  the  design  and  aim  of  the  Universe, 
is  in  fact  its  veritable  complement  ?  Seneca  (like  his  old 
sect)  makes  much  of  man's  physical  equipment,  his  up- 
right position,  his  endowment  to  comprehend  heaven  and 
earth  with  the  sweep  of  his  eyes,  while  his  head  turns 
easily  on  his  neck.  The  Universe  discharges  its  vast  opera- 


L.  ANN^US  SENECA,  THE  VERSATILE  415 

tions  without  reward  or  fee  (sine  prcemio*) :  these  things 
are  eminently  wholesome  to  us :  "  so  it  is  the  duty  of  man 
among  other  things  also  to  bestow  benefaction"  ("De 
Benef."  4,  12,  5).  But  what,  after  all,  is  great  to  man  ? 
What  is  great  in  man?  The  mighty  works  of  Nature 
impress  us  as  great,  simply  because  we  are  small:  it  is  all 
a  relative  greatness  ("  Nat.  Qucest.,"  9,  c,  3,  prsefat.  9). 

Seneca  utterly  turns  aside  from  that  standard  of  virtus  or 
excellence  which  we  have  observed  without  any  substan- 
tial variation  from  Achilles  to  Csesar.  He  denies  and  re- 
jects these  standards.  His  entire  philosophy  of  history,  his 
view  of  human  annals  —  all  this  turns  away  from  that 
ecstasy  in  the  contemplation  of  the  extraordinary,  of  the 
uncommon,  provided  the  possessor  thereof  seeks  merely 
power  and  self-aggrandizement.  A  sect  which  made 
Socrates  its  foremost  saint,  and  him  greatest  in  all  his 
career  when  he  defied  the  thirty  tyrants  and  when  he 
drank  the  hemlock:  that  philosophy,  I  say,  looked  with 
cool  and  searching  glance  at  the  conquerors:  the  "great 
men  "  of  worldly  valuation  at  all  times.  And  so 
Seneca,  too,  rises  above  the  long  pagan  worship.  Let 
not  the  reader  forget  that  that  worship  is  of  the 
essence  of  classic  paganism:  to  classic  paganism  we 
return  whenever  we  worship  that,  or  abase  ourselves 
before  any  form  of  uncommon  endowment.  This  is  no 
loose  phrase  of  narrow  bigotry;  it  is  an  important  form  of 
historical  truth.  So  our  philosopher  says:  "What  is 
foremost  in  human  affairs  ?  Not  to  have  covered  the  seas 
with  fleets,  nor  to  have  planted  signs  on  the  beach  of  the 
Red  Sea,  not,  when  land  gave  out  for  the  quest  of  doing 
harm,  to  have  roamed  on  the  main  in  search  of  things 
unknown,  but  to  have  seen  everything  by  means  of  the 
soul,  and  —  greatest  of  all  victories  —  to  have  overcome 
one's  own  faults.  Numberless  are  they  who  had  nations 
and  cities  in  their  power,  very  few  who  had  themselves" 
{"Nat.  Qucest."  prsef.  Ill,  10).  It  is  natural  that  Seneca 
should  feel  a  keen  antipathy  and  bitter  hatred  for  the 
imperial  pervert  Caligula  —  his  mad  bursts  of  fury,  his 
exquisite  cruelty,  his  bitter  vindictiveness,  his  incredible 


416  TESTIMONIUM  AXDLE 

gluttony  —  among  common  pursuits  of  men,  too,  the  cook 
and  the  soldier  both  appear  to  him  as  superfluous:  his 
satire  flays  Apicius  the  gourmet  of  his  earlier  years  ("  Ad 
matr.  Helv."  6,  8).  Luxury  is  a  treason  to  Nature 
("  Ep.,"  90,  19).  To  the  cruelty  of  Sulla's  proscription 
he  refers  with  quivering  indignation.  "  Let  them  hate  me 
provided  they  fear  me  ":  you  might  know  that  this  was 
written  in  the  era  of  Sulla  {"De  Ira"  1,  20,  4). 

What  of  Caesar,  the  most  successful  name  in  Roman 
annals  ?  With  Coriolanus,  Catiline,  Marius,  Sulla,  with 
Pompey  himself,  he  forms  a  gallery  of  eminent  Ingrates: 
"  From  Gaul  and  Germany  he  worked  the  war  around 
upon  the  capital,  and  that  coddler  of  the  plebs,  that 
people's  man,  placed  his  camp  in  the  Circus  Flaminius, 
nearer  than  had  been  that  of  Porsena"  ("  De  Benef."  V, 
16,  5).  All  conquerors,  nay  all  autocrats,  are  an  object  of 
his  detestation :  not  only  Cambyses  and  the  puffed-up 
Xerxes,  but  even  Alexander.  When  that  genius  indulged 
those  fits  of  temper  and  passion  which  have  so  deeply 
stained  his  memory,  he  illustrated  the  very  apogee  from 
the  Sun  of  righteousness  —  the  Mastery  over  oneself 
being  the  essence  of  Stoic  law  of  conduct.  When  the 
Macedonian  conqueror  threw  Lysimachus  before  a  lion, 
fangs  and  claws  were  really  those  of  Alexander  himself 
(" De  Clementia"  1,  25,  1).  Alexander's  killing  of  the 
philosopher  Callisthenes  was  an  indictment  which  time 
itself  could  not  erase.  All  conquerors  depart  from  the 
band  of  wise  men,  for  they  are  insatiable.  Chiefly,  how- 
ever, are  they  rated  so  low  because  they  lay  violent  hands 
on  freedom.  All  the  Saints  in  the  Stoic  cult  are  exemplars 
and  apostles  of  freedom:  Socrates,  Scsevola,  Fabricius  the 
incorruptible,  Rutilius  the  righteous  exile,  and  above  all 
the  Romans,  Cato  of  Utica ;  the  slayers  of  the  Attic  tyrant, 
Harmodius  and  Aristogeiton,  are  honorably  mentioned 
here.  It  is  cheap  wit  to  call  his  eulogy  of  Socrates  a  Stoic 
homily :  Seneca  writes  with  substantial  fairness  :  "  Last  of 
all  his  condemnation  was  accomplished  undermost  serious 
charges :  he  was  accused  both  of  violation  of  religious 
rites  and  of  corrupting  the  young,  which  he  was  alleged 


L.  ANN^EUS  SENECA,  THE  VERSATILE  417 

to  have  let  loose  upon  the  gods,  upon  their  fathers,  upon 
the  state.  After  this  the  prison  and  the  hemlock.  These 
things  were  so  far  from  ruffling  the  soul  of  Socrates,  that 
they  did  not  even  ruffle  his  countenance.  That  wonderful 
and  extraordinary  distinction  he  maintained  to  the  end: 
no  one  saw  Socrates  more  cheerful  or  more  gloomy.  He 
was  even-tempered  in  such  unevenness  of  fortune"  ("Ep.," 
103,  28).  In  fact,  everywhere  are  those  historical  char- 
acters extolled  who  suffered  for  righteousness  and  who 
abandoned  all  the  world  holds  dear  rather  than  abase  their 
freedom  or  deny  their  deepest  convictions.  The  Stoics  are 
the  masculine  among  philosophers. 

Righteousness  is  a  healthy  condition  of  the  soul,  all 
wrong-doing  a  form  of  mental  disease.  Reason  should 
ever  hold  sway  over  Passion  and  Emotion.  The  highest 
happiness  of  this  life  is  freedom  from  lust,  from  covetous- 
ness,  from  ambition,  and  above  all,  freedom  from  fear. 
The  outward  things  (externa,  fortuita~)  really  do  not  bene- 
fit ;  they  do  certainly  not  concern  the  soul,  they  are  indif- 
ferent. The  soul-element  in  us  is  divine,  it  is  a  particle, 
however  small,  of  the  divine  spirit  which  permeates  the 
Universe.  The  soul,  therefore,  defies  physical  violence 
and  every  form  of  force  or  constraint.  Consequently  the 
Wise  Man  cannot  suffer  wrong :  the  malefactor  cannot 
injure  the  former's  soul,  which  alone  constitutes  his  true 
personality.  It  is  a  matter  of  controversy  whether  virtue 
is  the  highest  good,  intrinsically,  or  the  cause  of  the 
highest  good.  A  great  thing  and  supreme,  and  near  to 
the  deity,  is  not  to  be  shaken  (non  concuti). 

Instead  of  citing  the  endless  passages  in  which  Seneca 
disposes  of  death  and  the  fear  of  death,  I  would  rather 
direct  my  reader  to  the  philosopher's  theory  of  self-de- 
struction. There  is  no  other  way,  he  holds,  of  maintain- 
ing one's  freedom  against  tyrants.  Thinking  of  the  mad 
cruelty  of  a  Cambyses,  or  how  Astyages  unknowingly 
was  made  to  eat  of  his  own  son,  he  goes  on  to  say:  "  In 
whatever  direction  you  look,  there  is  a  limitation  of 
troubles  :  do  you  see  that  precipice  ?  There  is  a  descent 
to  freedom.  Do  you  see  that  sea,  that  river,  that  cistern  ? 
2E 


418  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

Freedom  there  abides  at  the  bottom.  Do  you  see  that 
tree,  low,  dried  up,  barren  ?  Freedom  is  suspended  from 
it.  Do  you  see  your  neck,  your  throat,  your  heart  ? 
They  are  means  of  escape  from  slavery  "  (" De  Ira" 3, 15, 
4).  Of  poverty :  "  If  the  extreme  necessities  befall  the 
wise  man,  he  will  speedily  go  out  from  life  and  will  cease 
to  be  troublous  to  himself"  ("Ep.,"  17,  9).  "I  shall 
not  abandon  old  age  if  it  shall  reserve  my  entire  being  for 
myself,  my  entire  being,  mind  you,  on  the  side  of  that 
better  part  (i.e.  the  soul-powers),  but  if  it  shall  begin  to 
shake  my  intelligence,  to  violently  wrench  its  essential 
elements,  if  it  will  not  leave  life  to  me,  but  mere  animal 
existence  alone,  then  I  shall  bound  forth  as  from  a  crazy 
and  tottering  edifice  "  ("  Ep.,"  58,  35).  Socrates  is  praised 
for  not  cutting  short  his  life  in  prison,  for  letting  the  law 
take  its  course,  for  gratifying,  for  thirty  days,  his  friends 
with  his  last  discourses.  Still  he  goes  on  to  say  a  little 
further  on:  "One  cannot  lay  down  a  universal  rule, 
whether,  when  some  force  outside  of  ourselves  threatens 
death,  one  should  anticipate  or  await  it  "  ("Ep.,"  70,  11). 
He  eloquently  praises  a  German,  who,  a  little  while  be- 
fore, when  being  prepared  to  fight  with  wild  beasts  in  a 
forenoon  spectacle,  had  choked  himself  with  the  meanest 
of  appurtenances  when  retiring  to  a  private  place  for  the 
last  time :  "  this  it  was,  to  treat  death  with  insult "... 
"  O  hero  indeed !  worthy  to  whom  the  choice  of  fate 
should  be  given!  how  bravely  would  he  have  used  a 
sword!"  ("Ep.,"  70,20). 

From  this  point  it  seems  meet  to  go  on  to  that  of  the 
Immortality  of  the  Soul.  The  Stoic  sect  denied  it,  be- 
lieving in  a  corporality  of  the  soul  and  that  it  was  mingled 
again  with  the  divine  substance  that  permeated  the  Uni- 
verse. Seneca  himself  was  too  widely  read  and  too 
greatly  impressed,  e.g.  with  Platonic  ideas,  to  be  content 
with  mere  iteration  of  Stoic  dogma.  Thus  he  writes 
("Ad  Marciam  de  Consolatione"  23,  1)  of  death  as  a 
journey  to  the  beings  above,  as  a  putting  away  of  the 
dregs  of  earth,  as  a  process  of  disencumberment  from  non- 
spiritual  burdens,  as  a  return  to  the  soul's  origin,  — 


L.  ANKffiUS  SENECA,  THE  VERSATILE  419 

Platonism :  indeed  he  names  Plato  (2)  —  "  There  awaits 
him  (the  deceased  son  of  Marcia)  an  eternal  rest  (a>terna, 
requies)"  (24,  5).  — "Your  father,  Marcia,  there  clasps  to 
his  breast  his  own  grandson,  although  there  all  is  kin  to 
all,  grandson  rejoicing  in  the  new  light,  and  teaches  him 
the  movements  of  the  neighboring  stars,  and  not  by  con- 
jecture, but  truly  experienced  in  all  things  he  gladly  leads 
him  into  the  mysteries  of  Nature  "  (ib.,  25,  2).  Thus  as 
in  Platonic  fervor.  But  elsewhere  his  utterance  greatly 
differs :  he  does  not  know  whether  the  deceased  has  per- 
ception or  not  ("  Ad  Polybium"  5,  1).  In  either  case 
the  soul  is  well  off :  for  either  at  least  it  is  rid  of  all 
troubles  of  life,  of  pain  and  fear,  or  (the  Platonic  alterna- 
tive) it  is  then  at  last  truly  discharged  from  its  dungeon, 
and  enjoys  the  contemplation  of  the  Universe,  gains  a 
closer  vision  of  divine  things,  the  comprehension  of  which 
he  had  so  long  sought  in  vain  (ib.,  9,  2-3)  (cf.  "Ep.,"  71, 
16;  76,  25).  "Death  either  consumes  us  or  strips  us" 
("Ep.,"  24,  18).  At  bottom  he  vacillates  and  wavers  in 
his  position  —  there  were  Hamlets  before  Hamlet  —  and 
"  we  know  that  the  whole  creation  groaneth  and  travaileth 
in  pain  together  until  now "  .  .  .in  short,  it  is  the  con- 
cern of  the  ages.  But  Seneca,  I  say,  in  his  wavering  is 
an  image  of  our  common  unaided  humanity.  In  one 
place  he  writes  (as  Comte  has  written  later)  :  "  Therefore 
men  indeed  do  perish,  but  humanity  itself,  towards  which 
individual  man  is  being  moulded,  endures,  and  while  men 
are  toiling,  are  passing  away,  humanity  suffers  not  at  all " 
("  Ep.,"  65,  7).  Elsewhere  he  speaks  with  a  positive 
hope :  "  Thus  through  this  span  of  time  which  extends 
from  infancy  to  old  age,  we  are  ripening  for  another 
birth"  ("in  alium  maturescimus  partum").  "Not  yet 
can  we  endure  heaven  but  at  intervals,  therefore  fearlessly 
look  thou  forward  to  that  decisive  hour  ("  horam  illam  de- 
cretoriam  ") :  it  is  not  the  last  for  the  soul,  but  for  the 
body  "  .  .  .  "  You  may  carry  out  no  more  than  you  have 
brought  in"  .  .  .  ("  Ep.,"  102,  24-25).  Academic  persons 
have  said  that  this  was  "  the  historical  point "  where 
Paganism  and  Christianity  met,  whatever  that  may  be. 


420  TESTIMONIUM  ANBLE 

Historically,  I  deny  it :  the  mere  coexistence  of  Seneca 
and  St.  Paul  means  nothing  but  an  item  for  chronological 
curiosity :  the  slender  fiction  of  their  correspondence  is  a 
shallow  production,  hardly  to  be  dignified  by  the  title  of 
literary  exercises  on  the  part  of  the  forger.  The  essence  of 
Christianity  is  a  reception  of  transcendental  boons  coming 
at  a  definite  point  of  history ;  essential  facts,  not  a  consum- 
mation of  an  academic  development  or  of  a  sequence  of  ever 
loftier  theses  and  positions.  The  proud  autonomy  and 
spiritual  autocracy  of  the  Stoic  position  defies  fusion  with 
a  system,  the  founder  and  enduring  basis  of  which  uttered 
this  beatitude :  "  Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit,  for  theirs 
is  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven"  (St.  Matthew,  5,  3). 

This  non-relation  then,  historically  and  genetically  speak- 
ing, I  hold  to  be  exactly  true  and  entirely  demonstrable 
to  all  unprejudiced  students  of  classic  civilization. 

At  the  same  time  there  is  a  body  of  moral,  of  distinctly 
spiritual,  judgment  and  sentiment  which  again  and  again 
reminds  us  of  —  seems  to  us  to  bear  resemblance  to  — 
Christianity.  True  to  the  spirit  and  design  of  this  work,  I 
will  not  trim  or  trick  out,  not  commend  nor  depreciate,  but 
present  data  for  my  readers'  own  judgment  :  "All  crimes 
are  wrought,  as  far  as  sufficeth  for  their  guilt,  before  the 
accomplishment  of  the  deed"  —  and  before:  "If  any 
one  were  to  cohabit  with  his  own  wife  in  the  belief  that 
she  were  another  man's,  he  will  be  an  adulterer,  although 
she  be  no  adulteress "  ("_Z)e  Constantia  Sapientis"  7,  4). 
"  If  we  wish  to  be  fair  judges  of  all  things,  let  us  first  be 
convinced  of  this,  that  none  of  us  is  without  guilt  (sine 
culpa).  For  it  is  this  point  from  which  the  greatest 
indignation  arises."  "I  have  committed  no  wrong,"  and 
"  I  have  done  nothing."  "  Nay,  you  confess  nothing. 
We  are  indignant  at  having  been  censured  with  some 
admonition  or  form  of  restraint,  whereas  on  that  very 
occasion  we  sin  in  that  we  add  to  our  misdeeds,  arro- 
gance, and  contumacy.  .  .  ."  ("De  Jra,"  2,  28, 1).  Fiery 
coals  :  "  Some  one  will  be  angry  with  you  :  but  you 
reply  by  challenging  him  with  acts  of  kindness"  ("De 
2,  34,  4).  "  We  are  all  evil :  whatever  therefore 


L.  ANN^US  SENECA,  THE  VERSATILE  421 

is  censured  in  another,  this  each  single  one  will  discover 
in  his  own  bosom  ('in  suo  sinu  inveniet')"  (ib.,  3,  26,  4). 
Towards  the  eradication  of  anger  "nothing  will  avail 
more  than  reflecting  on  our  mortality"  (ib.,  3,  42,  2). 
"To  obey  God  is  freedom"  (" De  Vita  Beata"  15,  7). 
"  Not  even  that  poison  (of  calumny)  .  .  .  will  prevent  me 
from  praising  the  life — not  that  which  I  lead,  but  that 
which  I  think  I  ought  to  lead,  shall  not  prevent  me  from 
following  virtue  even  though  far  behind  it,  and  merely 
crawling"  (reptabundus,  ib.,  18,  2).  "You  deny  that 
any  one  lives  what  he  utters  .  .  .  what  wonder  when 
they  talk  heroic  things,  gigantic  things,  passing  beyond 
all  storms  of  humanity  :  when  they  nail  themselves  to 
crosses,  into  which  each  individual,  one  of  you  himself 
drives  his  own  additional  nail.  Still,  when  brought  to 
execution,  they  hang  each  on  his  individual  pale  :  these 
who  direct  their  punitive  action  against  themselves,  are 
tortured  (distrahuntur~)  by  as  many  crosses  as  are  their 
appetites.  .  .  ."  (ib.,  19,  3).  "Nothing  will  I  do  for  the 
sake  of  reputation,  everything  for  the  sake  of  conscience  " 
(ib.,  20,  4).  "To  my  friends  I  shall  be  agreeable,  to 
my  enemies  gentle  and  yielding"  (ib.,  20,  5).  "This 
then  is  demanded  of  man,  that  he  be  useful  to  men,  if 
possible,  to  many,  if  not,  to  few,  if  not,  to  those  nearest 
him,  if  not,  to  himself  "  ("  De  Otio,"  3,  5).  At  another 
place  he  asks  which  of  the  two  is  more  productive  of 
good,  a  presiding  justice  who  hands  down  verdicts  in 
litigation,  or  he  who  teaches  "  what  is  righteousness, 
what  devotion,  what  endurance,  what  bravery,  what  con- 
tempt of  death,  what  the  understanding  of  the  gods  (he 
means  the  physical  universe)  and  how  great  a  possession 
of  men  is  a  good  conscience  (bona  conscientia')  ? "  ("De 
Tranquillitate  Animi,"  3,  4).  The  Wise  Man  counts  "his 
own  body  also  and  his  eyes  and  his  hand  and  whatever 
will  make  life  dearer,  and  himself,  among  possessions 
held-on-sufferance  (inter  precaria)  and  lives  as  one  who 
is  loaned  to  himself  and  will  make  return  to  those 
making  demand,  without  any  gloominess.  And  still  he 
is  not,  on  this  account,  cheap  in  his  own  eyes,  but  will 


422  TEST1MONIUM  ANIMJE 

do  everything  with  a  painstaking  care  and  circumspection 
as  great  as  that  with  which  a  man  of  scrupulous  honesty 
is  wont  to  look  after  a  trust"  (ib.,  11,  1-2).  "The 
craving  for  the  possession  of  another,  from  which  arises 
all  the  evil  of  the  soul  "  ("Be  dementia"  2,  1,  4).  "  As 
not  even  in  the  animals  destined  for  sacrifice,  although 
they  be  fat  and  be  resplendent  with  gold,  is  there  honor 
shown  to  the  gods,  but  in  the  pious  and  sincere  purpose 
of  the  worshippers"  (" De  Beneficiis,"  1,  6,  3).  "There- 
fore the  good  discharge  their  worship  acceptably  even 
with  flour  and  sacrificial  porridge,  the  wicked  on  the 
other  hand  will  not  escape  from  (the  charge  of)  impiety 
even  though  they  stain  the  altars  with  rivers  of  blood  " 
(ib.).  The  widow's  mite  :  "  If  benefactions  depended  on 
things,  not  on  the  purpose  itself  of  him  who  bestows 
the  kindness,  they  would  be  the  greater,  the  ampler  were 
what  we  receive.  But  that  is  an  error  :  for  sometimes 
he  puts  us  under  greater  obligations  who  gave  a  little 
with  a  large  manner "  .  .  .  "  who  gave  a  small  dole 
but  with  a  willing  spirit"  (ib.,  1,  7,  1).  A  slave  (ut- 
terly anti- Aristotelian)  is  capable  of  noble  qualities  : 
"a  slave  may  be  (it  is  in  his  power  to  be)  righteous, 
he  may  be  brave,  he  may  be  of  a  lofty  spirit "  (ib.,  3, 
18,  4).  "  For  it  depends  of  what  soul  he  is  (who  does 
the  kindness),  not  of  what  civil  station  :  from  no  one 
is  virtue  shut  off,  to  all  it  lies  open,  all  does  it  admit, 
all  it  invites  :  the  freeborn,  the  freedman,  slaves,  kings, 
exiles "  (ib.,  3,  18,  2).  "  He  is  mistaken,  who  thinks 
that  slavery  takes  possession  of  the  entire  man  :  his 
better  portion  is  accepted  :  the  physical  persons  are 
subject  and  are  given  in  fee  to  the  owners,  the  mind  is 
sui  juris  "  (ib.,  3,  20,  1).  "  If  thou  imitatest  the  gods, 
bestow  benefactions  even  upon  the  ungrateful  :  for  even 
for  criminals  the  sun  rises  and  to  the  pirates  the  seas 
are  open "  (ib.,  4,  26,  1)  ..."  God  gave  also  certain 
bounties  to  the  human  race  as  a  whole,  from  which 
(bounties)  no  one  is  excluded.  For  it  could  not  hap- 
pen, that  the  wind  should  be  favorable  to  good  men, 
but  the  opposite  to  bad  men"  .  .  .  "nor  could  a  statute 


L.  ANN^US  SENECA,  THE  VERSATILE  423 

be  laid  down  for  the  rain  showers  that  are  to  fall,  that 
they  should  not  descend  upon  the  fields  of  the  bad  and 
the  wicked "  (ib.,  4,  28,  3).  "I  hold  therefore  that 
those  are  not  benefactions  which  will  not  make  the  soul 
better"  (ib.,  5,  13,  2).  "Not  to  admit  evil  counsels 
into  the  soul,  to  raise  clean  hands  to  heaven  "  ("Nat. 
Qucest."  3,  prcefat.  3).  It  is  a  part  of  the  design  in 
the  destruction  of  the  world  that  its  parts  may  be  cre- 
ated anew  sinless  (innoxice)  and  that  there  may  not 
survive  any  instructor  of  evil  (" Nat.  Qucest."  3,  29,  5). 
Of  a  future  doomsday  through  deluge  :  "  when  the  judg- 
ment of  the  human  race  shall  have  been  accomplished " 
(ib.,  3,  30,  7).  "We  die  worse  than  we  are  born.  That 
is  our  fault,  not  that  of  nature  "  ("  Ep.,"  22,  15).  "  He  is 
happiest  and  an  unconcerned  possessor  of  himself  who  looks 
forward  to  to-morrow  without  anxiety  "  ("Ep.,"  12,  9). 
"  He  who  has  learned  to  die  has  unlearned  being  a  slave  " 
("  Ep.,"  26,  10).  "  Nobody  is  familiar  with  God  :  many 
think  ill  of  him  and  with  impunity  "  ("  Ep.,"  31,  10).  "  O 
when  will  you  see  that  time  in  which  you  will  know  that 
Time  has  no  practical  relation  to  you?"  ("Ep.,"  32,  4). 
"  A  sacred  spirit  abides  within  us,  observer  of  good  and 
evil  things,  and  guardian  thereof.  As  we  have  dealt  with 
this  spirit,  so  it  deals  with  us"  ("Ep.,"  41,  2).  "What 
avails  it  to  hide  and  to  shun  the  eyes  and  ears  of  men  ? 
A  good  conscience  summons  the  crowd,  an  evil  one  is  anx- 
ious and  concerned  even  in  solitude"  ("Ep.,"  43,  4-5). 
"How  can  Plato's  Ideas  make  me  better  ?"  ("Ep.,"58, 
26).  "  All  things  endure  :  not  because  they  are  eternal, 
but  because  they  are  defended  by  the  care  of  him  who 
controls  "  (H.  28).  "  Do  you  wonder  that  men  go  to 
gods  ?  G-od  comes  to  men,  nay,  what  is  closer,  comes 
into  men :  no  intellect  is  good  without  G-od "  ("  Ep.,"  73, 
16).  "  Luxurious  banquets,  wealth,  vile  pleasures,  or  any 
baits  of  our  human  kind  are  not  really  good,  because 
God  has  them  not  "  ("  Ep.,"  74,  14).  «  What  does  it  avail 
that  anything  should  be  concealed  from  man  ?  Nothing 
is  bolted  for  God."  "  He  is  present  in  our  souls  and 
comes  into  the  midst  of  our  reflections "  (ib.,  83,  1). 


424  TESTIMONIUM  ANIMvE 

"  Let  us  forbid  them  bringing  linen  cloths  and  combs 
for  Jupiter  and  to  hold  up  a  mirror  to  Juno  :  God  seeks 
no  attendants  :  why  not  ?  He  himself  ministers  to  hu- 
man kind,  everywhere  and  for  all  beings  is  he  present " 
("  Ep.,"  59,  48).  Who  will  not  be  reminded  of  St.  Paul, 
preaching  on  the  hill  of  Ares  at  Athens  :  "  Neither  is 
worshipped  with  men's  hands,  as  though  he  needed  any- 
thing, seeing  he  giveth  to  all  life,  and  breath,  and  all 
things"  (Acts  17,  25)? 

But  is  it  not  perhaps  true  that  the  morality  and  the 
spiritual  character  of  nascent  Christianity  and  aging 
paganism  were  actually  converging  and  approaching  the 
point  of  fusion?  What  if  Seneca's  noblest  aspirations 
had  been  merely  the  birth  and  product  of  his  own  time 
and  society;  and  that  blessed  automaton,  evolution,  had 
perhaps  made  this  remarkable  and  impressive  maturity  of 
spiritual  aspirations  and  convictions?  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  old  courtier  and  man  of  letters  lived  and  moved 
in  a  solitude  which  was  well-nigh  complete.  As  we  took 
his  own  testimony  as  to  his  own  soul,  we  may  fairly  accept 
his  own  testimony  as  to  his  own  times,  his  actual  environ- 
ment and  milieu. 

Home,  that  capital  of  the  Mediterranean  world  and  con- 
geries of  nations,  —  Seneca  thus  speaks  of  it :  "  Behold 
this  multitude,  for  which  hardly  suffice  the  roofs  of  the 
boundless  capital :  the  greatest  part  of  that  multitude  has 
no  fatherland.  From  their  municipal  towns  and  from 
their  colonies,  from  the  whole  earth  have  they  streamed 
together.  Some,  ambition  has  brought  there,  others,  the 
urgency  of  public  duty,  others,  some  political  mission, 
others,  luxury  seeking  a  convenient  and  rich  place  for  im- 
moralities, others,  the  eager  pursuit  of  liberal  studies, 
others,  the  public  shows.  Some  were  drawn  by  friend- 
ship. .  .  .  Some  brought  their  beauty  to  find  a  market 
for  it,  some  came  to  sell  their  power  of  rhetorical  utterance. 
Every  class  of  men  hastens  to  a  city  which  presents  large 
rewards  both  to  virtues  and  vices"  ("Ad  Helviam"  6,  2). 

In  his  moral  censure  directed  at  the  Society  of  Rome  — 
the  note  most  frequently  recurrent  is  the  condemnation  of 


L.  ANN^EUS  SENECA,  THE  VERSATILE  425 

Luxury,  a  worldliness  and  a  worship  of  pleasure  which 
fairly  ran  riot.  "  It  is  not  necessary  that  all  the  depth 
of  ocean  should  be  searched  through  nor  that  one  should 
burden  one's  stomach  by  means  of  a  slaughter  of  living 
beings,  nor  to  pluck  shellfish  from  the  unknown  beach 
of  the  uttermost  sea :  may  the  gods  and  goddesses  destroy 
those  whose  luxury  transcends  the  boundaries  of  so  daz- 
zling an  empire.  Beyond  the  Phasis  River  (Caucasus 
country)  they  insist  that  there  must  be  caught  that  with 
which  must  be  provided  their  ambitious  cuisine,  and  they 
are  not  weary  of  importing  birds  from  the  Parthians  who 
have  not  yet  made  requital  to  us.  .  .  .  They  vomit  in 
order  to  eat,  and  eat  in  order  to  vomit,  and  the  feasts 
which  they  gather  in  the  whole  world,  they  do  not  even 
deign  to  digest"  (" Ad  Helv.,"  10,  2-3).  He  speaks  of 
certain  tastes  of  the  table  :  boars  weighing  a  thousand 
pounds,  tongues  of  flamingoes  and  other  freaks  of  a  luxury 
which  actually  disdains  whole  animals  and  makes  a  choice 
of  definite  limbs  of  each"  ("  ffelv."  10, 2).  "  Why  is  there 
drunk  in  your  house  a  vintage  older  than  you  are  ?  "  .  .  . 
"  Why  are  no  other  trees  preserved  but  those  that  will 
produce  nothing  but  shade?  Why  does  your  wife  wear 
in  her  ears  the  wealth  of  a  rich  mansion  ? "  ("  De  Vita 
Beata"  17,  2).  .  .  .  "Those  eyes  which  cannot  endure 
any  marble  but  variegated  and  burnished  with  recent  care, 
who  have  no  patience  with  a  table  but  one  of  exquisite 
grain,  who  will  not  have  their  feet  tread  a  mosaic  floor 
less  costly  than  gold;  outdoors  they  will  with  perfect 
composure  look  on  rough  and  muddy  lanes  and  on  the 
greater  part  of  those  who  meet  them,  squalid,  the  walls 
of  the  tenement-blocks  (insulce)  crumbling,  cracked,  un- 
symmetrical"  (" De  Ira,"  3,  35,  5).  "I  see  robes  of 
silken  stuffs,  if  they  must  be  called  robes,  in  which  there 
is  nothing  by  which  the  body  or  shame  can  be  defended, 
robes  the  mistress  of  which  after  attiring  herself  therein 
cannot  well  swear  that  she  is  not  naked.  These  robes 
are  imported  for  a  vast  sum  from  nations  unknown  to  us 
even  for  commerce,  in  order  that  our  matrons  may  not 
even  display  more  of  themselves  in  their  boudoir  to  their 


426  TESTBIONIUM  ANBLE 

lovers  than  they  display  in  public"  ("De  Benef."  7,  9,  5). 
"  The  greatest  evil  of  the  times,  unchastity  "  ("Ad.  Helv." 
16,  3).  The  rich,  flitting  from  city  to  country  and  there 
from  villa  to  villa,  rarely  see  their  own  children  ("Ad  Mar- 
ciam"  24,  2).  The  anecdotes  of  bestiality  which  Seneca 
relates  of  Hostius  Quadra  would  afford  a  curious  but  most 
impressive  commentary  on  certain  verses  written  about  this 
time  by  St.  Paul  in  his  first  chapter  to  the  Romans.  It  is 
startling  that  Seneca  would  pen  such  things  at  all.  And 
if  the  loftiest  spirit  of  Rome  in  his  fervor  of  mortal  satire 
would  even  touch  upon  such  things  with  an  almost  cynical 
bitterness  and  brutality,  what  must  have  been  the  life 
and  conversation  of  the  broad  mass  of  that  society  !  How 
would  the  smart  set  (the  "  Lauti  ")  accelerate  the  dragging 
hours !  Canopus,  the  watering-place  of  Alexandria,  was 
notorious  for  its  immorality;  but  Baise,  the  favorite  sum- 
mer residence  of  Roman  "  Society,"  was  no  better,  accord- 
ing to  Seneca  ("  Ep.,"  51).  Revels  were  there  on  the 
private  yachts,  the  basins  resounding  with  the  music  of 
private  orchestras  —  the  luxury  connected  with  the  thermal 
waters  and  that  gulf  of  paradise  —  all  the  influences  there 
were  demoralizing  in  the  extreme.  The  amours  of  this 
aristocracy  were  carried  on  with  consummate  effrontery. 
Roses  were  there  and  music  and  all  the  allurements  of 
nocturnal  dissipation.  Sensualists  were  there  so  utterly 
unnerved  and  spent  by  their  own  lusts,  that  they  knew  no 
other  allurement  but  to  be  spectators  of  the  impurities  of 
others  ("  Ep.,"  114,  25).  But  why  proceed? 

The  dance  of  death  in  the  chief  city  and  mistress  of  the 
ancient  world,  as  Martial  and  Petronius  depict  it,  —  literary 
swine  who  wallow  in  the  sty  of  which  they  are  a  part,  — 
these  offer  abundant  proofs  of  the  moderation  with  which 
the  satirist,  courtier,  philosopher,  man  of  the  world, 
prophet  of  righteousness  —  Seneca,  has  written  of  his  own 
times.  The  early  Christian  church  chose  for  the  "world" 
(the  totality  of  men  indifferent  or  hostile  to  the  new 
spiritual  society)  the  word  ^o'o-yno?  ;  it  is  appalling  that 
they  used  so  vast  and  comprehensive  a  term,  but  Seneca 
himself  writes  thus  of  the  universality  of  evil:  "Why 


L.  ANN.EUS  SENECA,  THE  VERSATILE          427 

enumerate  detail  ?  When  you  see  the  Forum  packed  with 
a  multitude  and  the  Barriers  filled  with  a  moving  and 
teeming  mass  of  every  kind  of  numbers,  and  that  Circus, 
in  which  the  people  displays  the  greatest  part  of  itself: 
know  this,  that  there  are  there  as  many  faults  as  there  are 
human  beings.  And  among  those  whom  you  see  attired 
in  the  garb  of  the  Roman  gentleman,  there  is  no  peace: 
one  is  drawn  to  the  destruction  of  the  other  by  a  slight 
profit.  None  has  an  income  but  from  a  wrong  done  to  his 
neighbor.  The  prosperous  one  they  hate,  the  luckless 
one  they  despise.  The  one  greater  than  themselves  they 
feel  a  burden,  to  their  inferior  they  are  a  burden.  They 
are  goaded  by  different  appetites.  They  desire  universal 
wrack  and  ruin  on  account  of  some  frivolous  pleasure 
or  booty"  ("JPe  Ira,"  2,  8).  Still  more  sweeping  and 
gloomy  are  these  words:  There  is  a  rapidly  changing 
fashion  bound  up  with  definite  forms  of  moral  evil :  these 
abide  not  and  maintain  a  noisy  feud  with  one  another,  they 
rout  in  turn  and  are  routed :  "  but  the  same  utterance  we 
will  always  have  to  make  of  ourselves ;  that  evil  we  are,  evil 
we  have  been,  and  (unwillingly  I  must  add  it)  evil  we 
shall  be"  ("£e  Benef.,"  1,  10,  3). 


NOTE.  —  When  one  measures  the  startling  difference  of  apprecia- 
tion as  uttered,  e.g.  by  Bernhardy  and  by  Schiller  in  his  volume  on 
Nero,  one  realizes  the  depreciation  of  Seneca  now  current.  Seneca  is 
a  Stoicist :  to  him  Stoicism  is  as  a  faith  and  a  veritable  spear  and 
buckler.  But  this  adherence  is  not  set  down  in  mere  Latinization  of 
the  Stoa,  but  in  allusions  and  expressions  which  incessantly  emanate 
from  his  very  being.  His  large  reading,  especially  in  the  Epistulce 
Morales,  tempted  him  often  to  take  a  text,  as  it  were,  for  the  essay  in 
hand  from  the  works  he  happened  to  be  perusing.  Shallow  inferences 
have  been  drawn  from  this  literary  habit.  For  the  sake  of  such  read- 
ers as  desire  either  verification  or  suggestion,  I  append  here  a  some- 
what larger  number  of  references. 


Seneca's  domestic  philosopher-companion,  the  Cynic  Demetrius 
(Ep.,  62,  3).  Aviso-ships  entering  Puteoli  (Ep.,  77,  1).  Posthumous 
fame  (Ep.,  79,  17).  Open-air  bathing  in  January  (Ep.,  83,  5).  His 
desire  to  complete  his  "moral  philosophy"  (Ep.,  106,  2).  The 


428  TESTIMONIUM  ANIM^E 

miseries  of  a  courtier's  life :  "  non  consolabiraur  tarn  triste  ergastulura 
(prison-hut  of  chain-gangs  of  agricultural  slaves),  non  adhortabimur 
ferre  imperia  carnificum :  osteudemus  in  omni  servitute  apertam  liber- 
tati  viam  "  (de  Ira,  3,  15,  5).  Contrast  between  the  simplicity  of  the 
exile's  life  in  Corsica,  and  the  glittering  luxury  of  Rome  (de  Tranquill. 
Animi,  1,  9).  "Patris  mei  antiquus  rigor"  (Helv.,  17,  3).  Sense  of 
old  age  (Ep.,  12,  1 ;  19,  1 ;  26,  1). 

The  Universe,  Nature,  God,  Providence.  —  Prov.  1,  5;  6,5;  de  Ira, 
2, 13,  1 ;  16,  2  ;  3,  5,  6 ;  ad  Marciam,  7,  3  ;  18,  1  sqq. ;  de  Vita  Beata, 

15,  5 ;  20,  5 ;    (ultra-Roman  humanity,  ib.,  25,  3) ;    larger  humanity 
(de  Otio,  4,  1).     Nature's  Design  (ib.,  5,  3).     Ordination  by  Nature 
(Helv.,  6,  8).    Uncertainty  as   to  personal  God  (Helv.,  8,  3).     The 
World  and  the  human  soul  (ib.,  8,  4).     Death  an  ordinance  of  Na- 
ture ($.,13,  2).     This  world  a  fair  abode  in  itself  (Benef.,  2,  29,  3), 
"  Parens  noster  "  (ib.,  2,  29,  4).     "  Unus  omnium  parens  mundus  est " 
(3,  28,  2).    "  Quid  enim  aliud  est  natura  quam  deus  et  divina  ratio 
toti  mundo  partibusque  eius  inserta"  (4,  7, 1).     First  Cause  (ib.,  4, 
7,  2).  "  Sic  nunc  naturam  voca  fatum,  fortunam :  omnia  eiusdem  dei 
nomina  sunt  varie  utentis  sua  potestate."  .  .  .  (Benef.,  4,  8,  3).     "  Se- 
cundum  naturam  vivere  et  deorum  exempla  sequi :    di  autem  .  .  . 
quid  praeter  ipsam  faciendi    rationem   sequuntur?"  (ib.,  4,  25,1). 
Cosmic  plan  (6,  23,  1).     Quid  est  deus?    Mens  Universi.     Quid  est 
deus?    Quod  vides  totum,  et  quod  non  vides  totum  (Nat.  Qusest. 
Prsefat.,  13,  14).     Does  Reason  antedate  Matter?  (ib.,  16).    Fata  irre- 
vocabilia  ius   suum  peragunt,  nee  commoventur  prece  .  .  .  (H.  2, 
35,  2)  sive  anima  est  mundus,  sive  corpus  natura  gubernabile  (ib.,  3, 
29,  2).    Earth  a  globe  (4,  11,  2).    Providentia  ac  dispositor  ille  mundi 
deus  (4,  18,  5).     Quid  tamen  sit  animus  ille  rector  dominusque  nostri 
(7,  25,  2).     Sive  nos  inexorabili  lege  fata  constringunt,  sive  arbiter 
deus  universi  cuncta  disponit,  sive  casus  res  humanas  sine  ordine  im- 
pellit  et  iactat,  philosophia  nos  tueri  debet  (Ep.,  16,  5).      Destruction 
of  World  (Ep.,  71,  13). 

The  Stoic  Saints  :  Prov.,  3,  4.  de  Constant.,  1,  3  ;  2, 1 ;  7,  3,  14, 
3;  18,  5  ;  de  Ira,  1, 15,  3;  2,  32,  2 ;  3,  11,  3 ;  38,  2  ;  ad  Marciam,  22,  3 ; 
de  Vita  Beata,  21,  3  ;  27,  1 ;  de  Otio,  8,  1 ;  Tranq.  Anim.,  5,  2 ;  7,  5 ; 

16,  1;  16,  4;  17,  4;   Helv.,  13,  4;  13,  5;  13,  6;  Benef.,  5,  3, 1;  Ep., 
11,  10;   13,  4;  14,  2;   24,  4;   g4,  6;  28,  8;  64,  10;  Socrates,  Cato, 
Regulus  (Ep.,  71,  17) ;  Idealization  of  primitive  races  and  primitive 
civilization  (radical  difference  from  Epicureans,   here,   Ep.,  90,  4). 
Germans  collectively  praised  :  they  defy  poverty  and  hardships  (Prov. 
4,  14).     The  Rousseau-movement  in  Europe  will  readily  occur  to  the 
reader.     Tacitus's  "  Germania,"    written  about   a   generation  after 
Seneca's  death,  is  filled  with  the  same  spirit. 

Fortuita,  Externa,  Adventicia,  Accidentia  (Prov.  5,  1 ;  6,  5;  Con- 
stant., 5, 7;  9,  1)  ;  Gold  and  Silver  the  toys  of  adults  (ib.,  12, 1).  An 
enumeration  of  the  world's  valuation  of  children,  offices,  wealth, 
palaces,  highborn  and  comely  wife,  "  ceteraque  ex  incerta  et  mobili 
sorte  pendentia  "  (Marc.,  10,  1).  The  Stoic  to  admire  his  spiritual 


L.  ANK/EUS  SENECA,  THE  VERSATILE          429 

portion  alone  and  nothing  else  in  the  world  (de  Vit.  Beat.,  8,  3 ;  cf. 
15,  4;  16,3).  Independence  of  material  boons  constitutes  resem- 
blance to  the  gods  (Tranq.  A.,  8,  6).  Neutral  character  of  material 
goods  (Benef.,  1,  6,  2  ;  cf.  4, 22,  4).  Things  not  in  our  control  (5,  5,  4). 
The  soul  must  seek  riches  which  arise  from  the  soul  (7, 1,  7).  Na- 
ture malignant  in  not  concealing  gold  and  silver  from  men  (7,  10, 
4).  Greed  for  gold  very  ancient  (N.  G.,  4,  15,  2).  Ne  gaudeas  vanis 
(Ep.,  23,  1),  invecticiurn  gaudium  (Ep.,  23,  5),  mortem  inter  indiffer- 
entia  ponimus,  quse  aSid(f>opa  Graeci  vocant  (Ep.,  82, 10;  13).  Media 
(ib.,  15).  The  Hamlet  view  of  death:  "  quod  haec  iam  novimus ;  ilia, 
ad  quae  transituri  sumus,  nescimus  qualia  sint,  et  horremus  ignota" 
(Ep.,  82,  15).  Commoda  sunt  in  vita  et  incommoda,  utraque  extra 
nos  (Ep.,  92,  16  ;  cf.  22).  JEias  inter  externa  est  (Ep.,  93,  7).  Fra- 
gilibus  innititur,  qui  adventicio  laetus  est :  exibit  gaudium,  quod  in- 
travit  (Ep.,  98,  1),  quicquid  est,  cui  dominus  inscriberis,  apud  te  est, 
tuum  non  est  (ib.,  98,  10). 


As  to  the  Rome  of  Seneca,  I  must  not  forget  to  cite  the  noted  work 
of  Ludwig  Friedlsender,  formerly  professor  at  Konigsberg  ("  Darstel- 
lungen  aus  der  Sittengeschichte  Roms  in  der  Zeit  von  August  bis  zum 
Ausgang  der  Antonine"  first  edition,  1862),  "  The  City  of  Rome,  The 
Court,  the  Three  Classes,  Social  Intercourse,  Women,  Travels,  Scenic 
Representations,"  etc.,  etc.  Friedlaender  also  edited  Martial  and 
Juvenal. 


EPILOGUE  AND  APPIAN  WAY 

PERHAPS  such  readers  as  have  followed  the  author  to 
this  point  may  fail  to  see  why  there  should  be  any  fare- 
well. This  present  review  of  the  gravest  matter  in  classic 
civilization  has  filled  the  author's  soul  for  nearly  seven 
years.  Moreover,  this  book  is  the  fruit  of  a  tree  which 
has  been  growing  for  nearly  six  and  thirty  years.  Are 
the  classics  worth  while?  I  urge  nothing  here.  For  even 
now  I  clearly  see  the  Pharos  on  that  coast  which  bounds 
the  ocean  of  life.  There  is  a  certain  charm  in  gaining  a 
profound  understanding  of  something  difficult  or  eschewed 
by  the  vast  majority  of  the  children  of  men.  There  is  a 
definite  satisfaction  in  gaining  a  close  vision  of  things  far 
away,  of  experiencing  the  feeling  of  intimacy  and  of  living 
association,  of  agreeing  or  dissenting,  of  feeling  antipathies 
and  sympathies  roused  by  recorded  utterances  admired  for 
so  many  generations.  There  is  a  halfway  point  in  this 
road  —  the  mechanism  of  philological  concerns,  necessary 
on  account  of  our  remoteness,  but  necessary  only  for  a 
while,  a  means,  not  an  end.  Many,  ah  too  many,  never 
go  any  farther.  Undervaluation  or  Overvaluation  :  which 
shall  it  be  ?  The  words  pagan  and  paganism  are  rarely  heard 
from  the  lips  of  the  professional  classicist.  Why  not  ? 

The  sense  of  dealing  with  an  intellectual  and  cultural 
elite  is  apt  to  be  very  strong  with  younger  classicists,  per- 
haps with  all  classicists  in  sweet  youth,  that  charming  time 
of  growth  and  bounding  experiences,  when  the  verdure  of 
life  is  fresh  and  green.  The  accumulations  of  erudition, 
the  ever  lengthening  chain  of  learning,  the  herbaria  of 
time,  the  strata  and  deposits  of  past  and  ever  passing 
editors  and  editions,  smother  classicism.  An  elite  ?  Yes. 
Time  itself,  and  academic  exigencies,  even  in  Alexandrine 
and  Byzantine  times,  have  constituted  an  elite.  If  a 
stranger  in  future  seons  were  to  approach  Britain  and  find 

431 


432  TESTIMONIUM 

nothing  more  than  Westminster  and  St.  Paul's  and  what 
they  commemorate  —  if  Shakespeare,  Spenser,  and  Bacon, 
if  Queen  Elizabeth,  Pitt,  and  Gordon,  if  Bunyan,  Wesley, 
and  Milton,  if  Cromwell  and  Wellington  and  Nelson  and 
Tennyson,  if  Newton  and  Bentley,  if,  in  a  word,  the  fore- 
most worthies  of  British  annals  were  the  sole  concern  of 
the  foreign  student  —  if  he  never  looked  at  Pepys's  Diary 
nor  saw  the  miseries  of  Whitechapel,  the  sordid  side  of 
Glasgow  or  Dublin,  or  the  utter  futilities  of  dancing  and 
eating  and  hunting  and  card-playing  and  horse-racing, 
and  sitting  in  theatres  —  would  these  strangers  conceive 
of  Britain  aright? 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  a  forced  and  false  glamour 
over  classics.  The  ten  thousand  books  that  Kronos  has 
swallowed,  —  Greek  books,  —  who  would  resurrect  them  ? 
We  neglect  what  we  have.  The  chisel  of  Pheidias  and 
Praxiteles,  the  pen  of  Pindar  or  Plato:  these  were  un- 
common endowments.  But  the  vile  and  sordid  paganism 
which  underlies  most  of  classic  civilization  we  ignore.  Is 
it  right  that  we  do  this  ?  The  archaeologists  sin  most  here. 
There  is  a  strabism  of  one-sided  vision  in  their  profes- 
sional occupation.  The  mandatory  ecstasy  which  they 
command  us,  the  others,  to  feel  —  some  duly  feel  —  :  but 
I  would  not  bring  back  classical  paganism  if  every  idol 
described  in  Pausanias  could  be  recovered  in  flawless  per- 
fection, if  every  Corinthian  bronze  that  once  decorated  the 
villas  of  Roman  senators  could  be  set  up  again,  if  every 
scroll  cited  by  the  elder  Pliny,  by  Athenseus  or  Diogenes 
Laertius,  or  Gellius,  or  Macrobius,  could  be  placed  in  the 
British  Museum. 

The  word  pagan,  I  repeat,  is  never,  I  am  told,  heard  in 
the  vast  majority  of  classical  lecture-rooms.  As  if  taste 
and  sesthetical  gratifications  were  consummations  of  soul- 
growth.  The  paganization  of  so  many  Italian  humanists 
is  a  warning  phenomenon  of  a  much-vaunted  culture 
movement:  we  run  to  sciolism,  theirs  was  a  veritable  ab- 
sorption, an  immersion  —  :  I  think  of  Cicero's  phrase 
ingurgitare. . 

Besides,  the  classicists  have  suffered  from  the  preten- 


EPILOGUE  AND  APPIAN  WAY  433 

sions  of  the  students  of  matter.  The  absolute  identity  of 
matter,  as  often  as  we  look  at  it,  the  experiment,  the  per- 
petual recurrence  of  phenomena,  have  given  to  these  pur- 
suits a  great  prestige:  unfortunately,  so  we  were  told 
recently  at  the  death  of  Lord  Rayleigh,  nobody  knows 
(as  yet)  what  matter  is.  May  we  not  then  be  permitted 
to  be  concerned  as  much  in  the  affairs  of  the  spirit  ?  The 
scales  of  fish,  the  chemical  elements  of  meteorites,  pollen 
and  pistil  of  plants,  the  chemistry  of  fingernails  or  brain 
either  —  the  futilities  of  much  "  research  "  subservient  to 
the  current  simian  mythology  —  what  do  they  concern  the 
better  portion  of  ourselves  ? 


Early  in  July,  some  eleven  years  ago,  I  had  gone,  even 
before  sunrise,  out  of  the  gate  of  San  Sebastian  at  Rome, 
out  upon  the  Via  Appia,  beyond  the  Circus  of  Maxentius. 
There,  in  the  utter  solitude  of  what  was  once  a  row  of 
tombs,  still  stands  the  ponderous  and  stately  monument 
of  Csecilia  Metella,  widow  of  the  brilliant  son  of  the  avari- 
cious triumvir,  Crassus,  consort  later  of  Pompeius  Magnus, 
whom  she  saw  foully  slain  hard  by  the  beach  of  Egypt. 
As  I  looked  out  upon  the  wide  and  dreary  Campagna  and 
upon  the  distant  fragments  of  arches  of  the  Aqua  Claudia 
(built  by  that  emperor  who  was  induced  by  his  empress 
Messalina  to  banish  Seneca),  the  most  vigorous  mental 
image  associated  with  the  spot  on  which  I  stood  was  that 
of  Paul  of  Tarsus.  He  had  appealed  to  Nero.  It  was  in 
the  spring  of  62  A.D.  He  had  come  up  from  the  great 
commercial  port  of  Puteoli,  and  he  walked  by  this  very 
tomb,  Romeward,  to  meet  his  judge  and  his  judgment. 
In  this  same  year  that  judge  of  the  great  apostle  married 
Poppsea,  and  slew  his  divorced  spouse  Octavia.  Seneca 
and  Paul:  the  one  looking  back  upon  all  his.  brilliant 
career,  and  achievements  ;  he  called  them  "  vana  studia" 
He  knew  he  was  not  far  from  the  goal,  and  entered  upon 
his  EpistulcB  Morales.  The  one  striving  for  absolute  free- 
dom and  living  in  a  proud  defiance  of  all  —  while  buoyed 
up  by  a  conformity  with  the  Universe,  he  still  wrote : 
ftv 


434  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

"With  himself  is  the  Wise  Man  contented"  ("Ep.,"  9, 
13).  The  other  one  had  written  of  that  which  was  foolish- 
ness to  the  Greeks  :  but  he  was  anxious  and  bent  upon 
spreading  it  over  the  earth  :  no  proud  academic  person : 
"An  ambassador  in  bonds." 

Why  is  culture  so  unsatisfactory  as  the  evanescence  of 
years  cheapens  for  our  souls  the  very  world  which  we 
have  endeavored  to  comprehend?  Hadrian  on  his  last 
pillow :  was  there  anywhere  a  greater  microcosm  of 
classic  civilization?  When  he  came  to  die,  why  was  he 
not  consoled  by  his  memories  of  the  comely  Antinous,  by 
the  temples  and  splendid  statues  he  had  reared  or  en- 
dowed, by  the  verse  and  the  wit  and  wisdom  which  he 
had  mastered,  by  the  judgment  and  acumen  with  which 
he,  a  double  sovereign,  had  held  sway  among  the  most 
conspicuous  critics,  poets,  scholars  of  his  time  ?  He  had 
lost  all  concern  for  all  things  but  one  :  his  soul  (^Elius 
Spartianus,  "  Hadrian,"  25). 

"  Dear  Soul,  roving  dear,  soft-speaking  dear, 
Guest  and  companion  of  the  body, 
To  what  places  wilt  now  depart 
Pale  poor  thing,  a-shivering,  stripped  poor  thing  ? 
Nor,  as  thy  wont,  wilt  utter  jests  ?  " 


UNIVERSITY  HEIGHTS,  NEW  YORK,  May  1,  1908. 


APPENDIX  TO  CHAPTER  II 

CHRONOLOGY  OF  HUMANISTS 

1374.  Petrarch  dies. 

1375.  Boccaccio  dies. 

1396.   Manuel  Chrysoloras  induced  to  occupy  chair  of  Greek  at  Florence. 

1398.   Filelfo  born  at  Tolentino  (near  Ancona). 

1402.  Poggio  appointed  Apostolic  Secretary  at  twenty-two. 

1414.  Poggio  from  Council  of  Constance  visits  St.  Gall  and  other  libraries, 

in  quest  of  Classic  Latin  Codices. 
1417.  Filelfo  to  Venice,  where  he  remains  two  years. 
1419.   Filelfo  to  Constantinople  as  secretary  to  Venetian  consul-general, 

to  master  Greek.    There  marries  a  daughter  of  John  Chrysoloras. 

1427.  Lionardo  Bruni  appointed  Chancellor  of    republic  of  Florence. 

Filelfo  returns  to  Venice  as  professor  of  eloquence. 

1428.  Filelfo  at  Bologna. 

1429-1433.   Filelfo  at  Florence,  appointed  professor  of  commonwealth. 
1431.   Lorenzo  Valla  at  Pavia. 

1433.  Beccadelli,  the  pornographer,  crowned  as  poet  by  the  emperor 

Sigismund. 

1434.  Filelfo  leaves  Florence. 

1437.  Valla,  private  secretary  of  Alfonso,  king  of  Naples. 

1438.  Greeks  crowd  Florence  during  sessions  of  Council.    Ficinus  born. 

1439.  Eugenius  IV  makes  Bessarion  the  Byzantine  a  Roman  cardinal. 

Filelfo  settles  at  Milan. 

1441.  Four  hundred  Codices  of  Niccoli  placed  in  library  of  San  Marco  at 
Florence. 

1447.  The  Bibliophile  Parentucelli  becomes  pope  as  Nicholas  V.  Sum- 
mons Valla  to  Rome  with  honor.  Chalcondylas  comes  to  Rome. 

1450.  Theodoros  Gaza  admitted  to  Bessarion's  household  at  Rome. 

1451.  Filelfo's  Satires  dedicated  to  King  Alfonso  of  Naples. 

1453.  Fall  of  Constantinople.  Poggio  chancellor  of  Florence  at  seventy- 
three, 

435 


436  TESTIMONIUM  ANDLE 

1454.  Politian  born. 

1456.  Argyropulos  teacher  of  Greek  at  Florence. 

1457.  Death  of  Valla. 

1468.   Trapezuntios  attacks  Plato's  moral  character. 

1459.  Poggio  dies  and  is  buried  in  Santa  Croce,  Florence. 

1460.  Thomas  Linacre  born  at  Canterbury. 

1463.  Pico  della  Mirandola  born. 

1464.  Cosirao  dei  Medici,  "  Pater  Patrise,"  dies  at  Florence. 

1465.  The  Press  of  Sweynheim  and  Pannartz  established  at  Subiaco, 

whence  it  was  removed  to  Rome. 

1467.  Desiderius  Erasmus  born  in  the  Netherlands. 

1468.  Bessarion  offers  his  library  to  Venice.    Paul  n  imprisons  Pom- 

ponius  Lretus. 

1469.  Peter  of  Medici  (father  of  Lorenzo)  dies. 

1470.  Bembo  born. 

1471.  First  press  at  Florence  (Servius  on  Vergil).    Thomas  a  Kempis 

dies  near  Zwolle. 

1475.  Filelfo  lectures  at  Rome. 

1476.  Greek  grammar  of  Lascaris  printed  at  Milan. 

1480.  JEsop  and  Theocritus  published  at  Milan. 

1481.  Filelfo  dies  at  Florence. 

1482.  Ficinus  completes  his  Latin  version  of  Plato. 

1486.  Pico's  nine  hundred  theses  (of  Platonic  mysticism)  published  at 
Rome. 

1488.  First  print  of  Homer,  press  of  Lorenzo  Alopa. 

1490.  Aldus  Manutius  determines  to  set  up  his  press  at  Venice.  Marcus 
Musurus,  a  Cretan,  furnished  model  for  Greek  type.  The  Aldine 
type  of  Italic  was  adopted  from  the  handwriting  of  Petrarch. 

1492.  Ficinus  published  an  edition  (with  commentary)  of  Plotinus,  one 

month  after  Lorenzo  dei  Medici's  death. 

1493.  Pico  absolved  by  a  brief  of  Alexander  VI.    Isocrates  published  at 

Milan. 

1494.  Death  of  Pico  and  Politian. 

1495.  Aldus  published  Theocritus,  dedicated  to  Guarinus  of  Verona. 

First  volume  of  Aristotle. 

1496.  Erasmus  at  twenty-nine  visits  a  Prince  de  Vere  in  Flanders. 

1498.  Pomponius  Lsetus  dies.     Last  volumes  of  the  Aldine  Aristotle. 

Nine  comedies  of  Aristophanes. 

1499.  Linacre's  translation  of  Proclus's  "  Sphere  "  published  by  Aldus. 

1500.  Before  this  date  4987  books  were  printed  in  Italy.     Aldine  Academy 

of  Hellenists. 


APPENDIX  437 

1502.  The  Aldiue  Thucydides,  Sophocles,  Herodotus.     Lucrezia  Borgia 

makes  her  entry  as  duchess  of  Ferrara. 

1503.  Aldus's  Euripides  and  Xenophon's  Hellenics. 

1504.  Aldus's  Demosthenes.     Erasmus  at  Bologna.    Saw  Julius  II  there. 
1505-1506.  Erasmus  in  England ;  his  intimate  friendship  with  Sir  Thomas 

More. 

1506.   Erasmus  teaches  Greek  at  Cambridge. 
1509.  Aldus  publishes  Plutarch's  Minora. 

1513.  Aldus's  Plato  dedicated  to  Leo  X. 

1514.  Aldus  published  Pindar,  Hesychius,  Athenaeus. 
1522.   Erasmus  settles  at  Basel. 

1524.  Thomas  Linacre  (physician  to  Henry  VIII)  dies,  haying  founded 
the  Greek  chair  at  Oxford. 


INDEX 


(FIGURES  ABB  OF  THE  PAGES) 


Academic,  lie,  of  drawing  culture 
from  everything  Greek,  64 ;  atti- 
tude, 78. 

.4cAz7JesandPatroklos,  101 ;  Achilles 
as  heros,  119. 

JEschines  contra  Timarchum,  264 
sqq. 

JEschylus,  136,  148  sqq.;  person- 
ally more  spiritual,  155. 

JEsop,  91. 

Agalma  (idol,  simulacrum),  146 ; 
divine  honors  given  to  it,  ib.  ; 
oldest,  most  venerated,  146,  310. 

Aiakos  at  jEgina,  121. 

Aigisthos  rewards  gods  for  his  ac- 
complishing seduction,  67. 

Alexander,  12, 125  sqq. ;  beginnings 
purer,  256. 

Alexander  VI  (Borgia),  46. 

Alkibiades,  136. 

Allegorical  interpretation  of  myths, 
63,  72  ;  refinements,  112,  288. 

Altruism,  15. 

Ameis,  on  types  of  gods,  63. 

Anacharsis,  90. 

Anaxagoras,  193. 

Anchises,  61. 

Ancyranum  Monumentum,  398. 

Angelo,  Michel,  25. 

Antigone,  13. 

Antiquarianism,  arid,  of  enumerat- 
ing appellations  of  Roman  gods, 
340. 


Aphrodite,  59,  60;  in  Cyprian  art, 
106;  Phryng  as  model  of,  129; 
foe  of  chastity,  206 ;  nudity  of 
idol  late,  287. 

Apollo,  59,  63  ;  worship  of,  145. 

Apollodorus's  Bibliotheca,  63,  65, 
170. 

Apotheosis,  11 ;  no  apotheosis  of 
men  in  Iliad,  68. 

Appetite,  100. 

Apuleius,  87. 

Ares  and  Aphrodite,  ballad  of,  62. 

Arete,  areta,  v.  Virtus. 

Ariosto,  59. 

Aristarchos,  53. 

Aristides  rhetor,  146. 

Aristippos  of  Kyrene,  28. 

Aristocrats,  98. 

Aristophanes,  1,  140,  149,  191  sq. ; 
gross  caricaturist,  221. 

Aristotle,  3,  26,  36,  42,  81,  82,  85, 
88,  144;  on  Athens,  190;  on 
manual  labor,  ib. ;  definition  of 
Tragedy,  169;  too  narrow,  172; 
on  Pericles,  190  ;  on  refinement 
of  affections,  206  ;  universality  of 
his  research,  237 ;  influence  of 
Plato,  238 ;  Earlier  Dialogues  on 
the  Soul,  238 ;  early  conception 
of  God  as  some  Being  kin  to 
Intelligence,  239  ;  origin  of  notion 
of  gods  among  men,  ib. ;  argument 
of  design,  240 ;  not  content  with 
mechanical  explanation  of  the 
world,  241 ;  censures  Demokritos, 


439 


440 


INDEX 


ib. ;  eternity  of  Matter,  ib. ;  God 
prime  mover,  ib.;  further  defini- 
tion, 242  ;  The  First  is  not  seed, 
but  is  the  Perfect,  242 ;  view  of 
myths,  ib.;  his  God  severed  from 
human  concern,  243 ;  felicity  of 
God  in  his  perfect  insight,  244 ; 
Aristotle  not  concerned  with  an 
hereafter,  ib. ;  theory  of  conduct, 
244  sqq. ;  defends  slavery,  246 ; 
on  general  type  of  humanity,  246 
sq.  ;  his  testament,  248. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  11,  20,  84,  262. 

Atheism,  13,  16. 

Athena,  in  Homer,  61 ;  in  Sophocles, 
177. 

Athenceus,  258. 

Athenians,  Athens,  2 ;  abasement, 
127 ;  brief  duration  of  empire, 
173  ;  Periclean  Age,  173  sq.,  189 ; 
domicile  for  every  talent,  188 ; 
appreciation  by  exile  Thucydides, 
ib. ;  democratic  changes,  190 ; 
democratic  sovereignty,  ib.;  Polyb- 
ius  on  same,  191 ;  Pallas's  holy 
city,  197 ;  dislike  of  Athenians  for 
Socrates,  221 ;  no  genuine  remorse 
for  death  of  Socrates,  221,  262 ; 
Plato's  utter  condemnation  of 
Attic  democracy,  234 ;  Athenian 
goodness  less  communal  than  that 
of  other  commonwealths,  249 ; 
Menander  a  mirror  of  Attic  life, 
257  sqq.  ;  decay  of  family,  259 ; 
fashionable  women,  261 ;  pruritus 
>  dispiitandi,  262  ;  Attic  traits  must 
not  be  confounded  with  Greekdom 
at  large,  262 ;  a  weary  and  sur- 
feited civilization,  265 ;  expen- 
siveness  of  worship,  an  incidental 
further  burden  for  married  men, 
267. 

Attic,  decadent  society,  65 ;  comedy, 
103;  tragedy,  themes  of,  171 ; 
subdialectical  strain  in  Attic 


speech,  185 ;  particularist  vanity, 

57. 

Augural  matters,  354. 
Augustine,  St.,  29,  413. 
Augustus,  and  letters,  398. 
Auspices,  354. 

B 

Bacon,  64,  312. 

Beautiful,  The,  3  ;  v.  Comeliness. 

Beccadelli,  37. 

Believer,  The  Evolutionist,  64. 

Believers,  The  Old,  at  Rome,  357. 

Bergk,  Th.,  116. 

Berkeley,  Alciphron,  16. 

Bernard,  St.,  39,  52. 

Bias,  81. 

Bibliographical  lists,  fad  of,  77. 

Biological  theory  of  man,  13. 

Birds  of  gods,  77. 

Black  Plague  of  1348  A.D.,  30. 

Boccaccio,  30  sqq. 

Bceotia,  1. 

Bonitz,  Hermann,  237,  249. 

Borgia,  46. 

Brasidas,  123. 

Britain,  actual,  102. 

Bruni,  L.,  35  sq. 

Bryant,  young,  142. 

Bryn  Mawr  or  Wellesley,  197. 

Buckle,  3. 

Bunsen,  374. 

Byron,  22,  60. 

C 

Ccesar,  characterization  of,  376. 

Catilinarian,  crisis,  366. 

Cato,  Elder,  on  proper  mode  of 
farmer's  worship,  342  sq. 

Cato,  of  Utica,  374  sqq. ;  simplicity 
and  determination,  375  ;  stoicism 
of,  ib.  ;  condemnation  of  con- 
temporary Society,  376 ;  death, 
381  ;  cf.  36. 

Character,  as  revealed  in  nomen- 
clature, 312-316. 


INDEX 


441 


Charles  Eiver  at  Boston,  classical, 
25. 

Chastity,  205  sqq. 

Children,  98. 

Chilon,  84. 

Chivalry,  61 ;  absence  of,  171. 

Christ,  18,  23 ;  bearing  the  cross, 
Libanius  on  the  gospels  of,  358 ; 
central  point  of  Christian  faith  in 
Julian's  time,  ib. 

Christ,  W.  v.,  Prof.,  173. 

Christian,  3;  position,  17  sqq.,  23; 
religion,  116  ;  more  independent 
of  sesthetical  accessories,  116 ; 
St.  Peter  on  basis  of,  146. 

Christianity,  4,  9,  14,  15,  18,  21 ; 
(v.  Ruskiri)  nascent  Christianity, 
and  aging  paganism,  424. 

Chrysippos,  Stoic  writer,  v.   Stoics. 

Cicero,  M.  Tullius,  34,  71,  135,  365- 
356 ;  Philhellene  and  classicist, 
141 ;  fervor  and  cultural  enthu- 
siasm of,  169 ;  in  mourning,  169 ; 
sketch  of,  362  sqq. ;  a  Wunder- 
kind,  trend  for  idealization,  363 ; 
equipoise  in  technical  judgments, 
ib.  ;  worship  of  glory,  365 ;  in 
Catilinarian  crisis,  366  ;  in  exile, 
368;  noblest  revelations  of,  369 
sqq. ;  leaning  to  Stoics  and  also  to 
Plato,  370  sq.  ;  on  death,  371  sq.; 
civic  heaven,  ib. ;  his  end,  374. 

Civilization,  17. 

Classicism,  13 ;  and  Christianity, 
22  ;  weariness  from,  24  ;  contem- 
porary, 431  sq. 

Clement  of  Alexandria,  136. 

Clinton,  Henry  Fynes,  173,  339. 

Columbia  University,  Library  of, 
77. 

Comedy,  Attic,  261  sqq. ;  v.  also 
Aristophanes. 

Comeliness,  100,  222. 

Comte,  Auguste,  13  sqq. 

Concubinage,  7,  60. 


Concupiscence,  justification  of,  at- 
tempted, 38 ;  loose  views  of,  61, 
63,  112  ;  v.  Aphrodite  and  Eros. 

Conduct  of  Life,  133. 

Conscience,  421. 

Constance,  Council  of,  35. 

Constantinople,  39. 

Cosmopolitan  spirit,  197. 

Courtesans,  104  sqq. ;  v.  Theoddte, 
215  sq.,  also  Phryne. 

Creed,  Hegelian,  12 ;  Simian,  311. 

Cretans,  64. 

Criticism,  Higher,  60. 

Cross  among  Romans,  327. 

Culture,  1  sqq.,  11,  13;  Droysen's 
definition  of,  17 ;  Symonds  on,  24 ; 
Goethe's  pride  of,  22  ;  of  the  Hu- 
manists, 51 ;  absurdity  of  attempt 
to  derive  culture  from  everything 
Greek,  64. 

Curtius,  Ernst,  84,  172. 

Cynics,  91. 

D 

Daimones,  144,  151. 

Danae,  legend  of,  65. 

Dante,  25,  172. 

Dead,  the  Book  of,  68,  69. 

Death  in  symbolism  of  Eleusinian 
Mysteries,  139 ;  consolation  in, 
142  ;  of  Hadrian,  142,  434 ;  fear 
of,  207  :  Epicurus  on,  273  sq  . 

Decharme  on  Euripides,  209. 

Deism,  4,  5,  31,  43. 

Deists,  4,  20. 

Delos,  sacred  gifts  at  (anathemata), 
310. 

Delphi,  80,  143 ;  source  of  author- 
ity, 120  sq. ;  as  Greek  Westminster, 
128 ;  Phryng  there,  129  ;  oracle 
there,  166 ;  looted  by  Phocians, 
253  ;  specimen  quest  addressed  to, 
306. 

Demeter  and  Kara,  137. 

Demokritos,  269. 


442 


INDEX 


Demons,  Higher,  9. 
Design,  in  Culture,  19. 
Dindorf,  W.,  78. 
Diogenes  Laertius,  287. 
Dittenberger,  W.,  302. 
Divine  law,  10  ;  order,  90. 
Doellinger,  130,  147. 
Dorians,  66,  96. 
Draper,  3. 
Dreams,  178. 
Droysen,  J.  G.,  17. 
Drumann,  381. 

E 

Education,  Greek,  53. 

Elegy,  96. 

Eleusis,  136  sgg. 

-Kgrin  Marbles,  174. 

Emancipation  of  soul,  why  not 
maintained  to  the  end  ?  32. 

Encomium  Morice,  v.  Erasmus. 

Endor,  161. 

JFnty  o/  grods,  42  ;  v.  Prometheus. 

Epaminondas,  122,  140. 

Ephesus,  Artemis  of,  145  ;  honors  of 
this  tutelary  goddess,  306. 

Epicurean,  9,  36. 

Epicureanism,  38 ;  of  Maecenas, 
396. 

Epicurus,  267-274  ;  quietism,  268  ; 
chief  tenets,  ib. ;  celebration  of 
his  birthday,  ib. ;  extolled  as 
spiritual  deliverer,  ib. ;  borrows 
the  materialism  of  Demokritos, 
268 ;  aim  of  Life,  270 ;  a  school 
of  Happiness,  ib.  ;  Peace  of  Soul, 
271 ;  chief  function  of  philosophy 
to  create  a  certain  state  of  being, 
271 ;  classification  of  Desires, 
ib. ;  Theory  of  Pleasures,  <6. ; 
would  not  be  an  atheist,  272  ; 
morals  a  matter  of  civil  develop- 
ment, utilitarian  in  their  origin, 
273  ;  averse  to  matrimony,  273  ; 
on  Death,  ib. ;  Plutarch's  censure 


of,  274  ;  cf.  Maecenas,  Lucretius, 
Horace. 

Epiphany,  form  of,  62. 

Epistolce  Obscurorum  Vivorum,  50. 

Erasmus,  22,  25,  47  sqq. ;  loved 
truth  in  a  certain  intellectual  and 
scholarly  way,  49 ;  his  exegesis  of 
the  New  Testament,  49 ;  on  Lu- 
ther's movement,  60. 

Eros,  Erotic,  100,  101 ;  v.  Con- 
cupiscence, Venus  Canina, 
Sappho,  106  sqq. ;  the  problem  of 
Sappho,  ib. ;  the  Pervert,  107 ; 
Lesbian,  107  ;  champions  of 
Sappho,  108 ;  Col.  Mure,  ib. ; 
Phaon  and  the  Leucadian  Leap, 
ib. ;  ecstatic  silliness  of  Bern- 
hardy,  109 ;  Quintilian  on  Alcaeus, 
t&. ;  Anakreon  of  Teos,  eulogist 
of  comely  boys,  109  sq.  ;  Eros 
favorite  name  of  Roman  slave- 
pages,  ib. ;  Cicero's  censure  of 
Greek  gymnasia,  109  ;  Plutarch's 
"Amatorius,"  110;  usages  at 
Babylon  and  Corinth,  110  ;  Teuf- 
fel  on  amatory  verse  of  Greeks, 
110;  Apollo  and  Koronis,  112; 
a  comely  youth  praised  by  Pindar, 
116 ;  close  association  between 
pulchritude  and  libido,  116 ;  Gil- 
bert Murray  on  Dorian  camps, 
ib.  ;  concupiscence  of  gods,  ib.; 
in  the  plays  of  ^Eschylus,  160 
sqq.  ;  The  "  Myrmidons,"  ib.  ; 
"  Hyakinthia  "  of  Spartiats,  168  ; 
"  loves  "  of  gods  without  chivalry, 
171 ;  cf.  176  ;  Deianira  forsaken, 
183  sq. ;  adultery,  216  ;  Aristotle 
on  Venus  Canina,  248  ;  Plato  on 
same,  ib. ;  fame  of  comely  boys, 
254 ;  unnatural  lust  as  an  institu- 
tion or  widespread  habit,  254  sqq. ; 
Attic  statutes,  255 ;  Athletic 
schools,  evil  influence,  according 
to  Plato,  256 ;  apotheosis  of  comeli- 


INDEX 


443 


ness,  257  ;  Greek  love,  ib. ;  eva- 
sive phrase  :  T&  watdiKd,  287  ;  M. 
H.  E.  Meier,  on  Greek  love,  287  ; 
erotic  verse  of  Horace,  396 ; 
anecdotes  of  bestiality,  426. 

Erotikds  of  Plutarch,  86. 

Ethnical  Religions,  74  sq. 

Etruscan  discipline,  349. 

Etymology  of  Brotds,  of  Homo,  71. 

Eugene  IV,  34. 

Euripides,  playwright,  194;  modern- 
ism in  handling  of  legends,  194 
sq. ;  debates  of  his  heroes  and 
heroines,  196  sq. ;  on  the  here- 
after, 200  sq.  ;  spiritual  protest 
against  legends,  201  sq.  ;  moral 
postulates,  202  ;  influenced  by  An- 
axagoras,  204  ;  his  "Hippolytos," 
a  drama  of  chastity,  205  ;  conflict 
between  insight  and  appetite,  207 ; 
aspiration  toward  a  Providence, 
207 ;  critical  attitude  toward 
Greek  humanity,  ib.  ;  condemna- 
tion of  athleticism,  207  sq. 

Evolutionist  believer,  the,  64. 

Excellence,  100,  111  sq. ;  v.  virtus. 

Exotic  character  of  Roman  belles 
lettres,  338. 

F 

Fable,  91. 

Fad  of  bibliographical  accumula- 
tion, 77. 

Fate,  57  ;  and  Guilt,  unsatisfactory 
in  Attic  tragedy,  180  sq. 

Filelfo,  41  sq. 

Fischer,  E.  W.,  Zeittafeln,  339. 

Flux,  All  is  in  a,  13. 

France,  10. 

Freedwomen  (Libertince),  Greek, 
in  Rome,  396. 

Froude,  Anthony,  50. 

a 

Ganymede,  Plato  on  legend  of,  64, 
100. 


Garnett,  B.,  49. 

Gellius,  the  fuzzy  and  pedantic,  360. 

Germany,  10. 

Gibbon,  4. 

Gildersleeve,  B.  L.,  "Essays  and 
Studies,"  361. 

Giovio,  Paul,  49. 

Gladstone,  53,  60. 

Glib  generalisations,  14,  20. 

Glory,  motive  with  the  Humanists, 
29. 

God,  3,  4,  5,  8,  11,  13 ;  Personal, 
11,  19. 

Gods,  of  Greece,  53  sqq. ;  of  Homer 
not  essentially  good,  59,  62  ,  mir- 
rors of  human  lust,  65, 112  ;  same- 
ness of,  and  men,  68,  113  (a 
notable  passage  in  Pindar)  ;  cf. 
118 ;  are  topical,  regional,  cir- 
cumscribed, 114 ;  Anger  and  Envy 
of,  151  sqq.,  171 ;  cowering  of 
mankind  before,  152 ;  v.  Prome- 
theus; of  JEschylus,  152;  his 
attempts  to  elevate  Zeus,  155; 
Persians  despised  Greek  polythe- 
ism, 163 ;  god  causes  human  folly, 
165  ;  hemp  from  which  Attic  trag- 
edy was  spun,  171 ;  favorites  of, 
177 ;  collision  with,  ib.  ;  local, 
179;  their  endurance  their  chief 
difference  from  man,  186 ;  tute- 
lary, 199  ;  enumeration  of  catego- 
ries of,  by  Pollux,  296  ;  by  Seneca 
and  St.  Augustine,  413  ;  Seneca's 
contempt  for  actual  worship  of,  ib. 

Goethe,  4,  6,  7,  10,  20 ;  his  pride  of 
culture,  22,  46,  60,  87,  142. 

Golden  Age,  73. 

Gracchi,  the,  333. 

Greek  art,  false  abstraction  from, 
101 ;  cantonal  feeling,  167  ;  come- 
liness, valuation  of,  113,  116 ; 
worship  of  physical,  265 ;  cult 
of  naturalness,  130 ;  commerce, 
decline  of,  169;  felicity,  113; 


444 


INDEX 


Frauenlob,  no,  103 ;  gymnasia 
contained  images  of  Cupids,  109 ; 
heroic  legends,  172 ;  ingenium, 
65;  local  pride,  118,  120,  122; 
myths,  low  level  of,  101 ;  national 
feeling,  80 ;  national  character, 
grave  faults  of,  167 ;  rating  of 
legends  as  history,  251 ;  as  aca- 
demic influence,  receding  in  our 
time,  63 ;  sculptors,  101 ;  think- 
ers, censuring  the  Homeric  Olym- 
pus, 71 ;  virgins,  105. 

Greekdom,  futile  abstraction,  87, 
114. 

Greeics,  2,  3,  14,  20;  of  Magna 
Grsecia,  97;  their  spirit,  101 ; 
cult  of  beauty,  ib.;  Aufklaerung, 
absurdity  of  term,  193. 

Gregorovius,  37. 

Grote,  George,  84,  172,  191,  222. 

Guarino  of  Verona,  37,  40. 

Guilt  and  Fate,  interfusion  of,  162. 

H 

Hadrian,  death  of,  434  ;  patron  of  a 

religious  and  cultural  renaissance, 

311. 
Hamlet,  note  of  death,   142,  208, 

429. 
Happiness,  estimate  of  human,  162 

sq. 
Hebraism,  controversial  term  coined 

by  Matthew  Arnold,  11,  20. 
Hegel,  11  sq. 
Helen,  178. 
Helios,  not  of  Olympians,  in  Homer, 

69. 
Hellenism,    20;    academic   fiction, 

exaltation  of  Mommsen  in  use  of 

term,  336. 
Hera,  57,  68,  65. 
Heraclitus,  82,  83. 
Herbaria  of  Time,  64. 
Hercules  (Herakles),  68,  184. 
Herder,  3,  4,  6. 


Hermann,  C.  Fr.,  on  Greek  women, 
104  sg.-147. 

Hermes,  68. 

Herodotus,  38,  55,  85, 159  sqq.,  172  ; 
affinity  with  ^Eschylus  160  sqq.  ; 
wider  culture  of,  160  sq. ;  on 
Hesiod  and  Homer,  161  ;  partisan 
of  Athens  in  431,  168. 

Heroes,  2  ;  theory  of,  74,  119  sqq. ; 
sacrifices  to,  119 ;  power  of,  to 
bless  or  harm,  120  ;  some  famous 
ones,  ib. 

Hesiod,  55,  172 ;  pessimism  of 
moral  judgments  of,  75  sqq. ;  v. 
Prometheus. 

Hetaera,  the  Greek,  217. 

Hexametric  phrase,  54. 

Higher  Criticism,  60. 

Historiography,  Koman,  339. 

History,  Philosophy  of,  6,  11 ;  v. 
Mommsen,  Comte,  Droysen ; 
crude  efforts  at,  in  Hesiod,  74. 

Homer,  44,  53  sqq. ;  on  northern 
tribes,  90. 

Homeric  Olympians,  112 ;  Epics, 
171 ;  Sophocles  does  not  rise 
above  that  level,  176 ;  Plato's 
attitude,  225. 

Horace,  106 ;  as  poet,  391 ;  Greek- 
ling,  ib. ;  death  dominates  his  lyric 
verse,  391 ;  futility  of  far-reaching 
aims,  391 ;  condemnation  of  pas- 
sion, 392  ;  peace  universal  quest, 
ib. ;  wealth  cannot  satisfy  the 
soul,  393 ;  his  withdrawal  from 
the  world,  393  ;  a  valetudinarian, 
394  ;  moralizing,  396  ;  valuation 
of  things,  ib.  ;  peace  of  soul,  ib. ; 
erotic  verse,  396 ;  sallies  against 
Stoicism,  397 ;  respect  for  same, 
ib. ;  Augustan  themes,  in  support 
of  statutory  regeneration  of  so- 
ciety, 398  ;  avowal  of  sensuality, 
399  ;  utilitarian  ethics,  ib. ;  sum- 
mary of  his  Weltanschauung,  ib. ; 


INDEX 


445 


mors  ultima  lined  rerumst,  400; 

influence  of  Pindar,  401. 
Humanist  popes,  45,  49. 
Humanists,  typical  failing  of,   41 ; 

differences  from  Greek  Sophists, 

191 ;  cf.  24   sqq.  ;  leaders  of,  33 

sqq. ;  fatherland  of,  60. 
Humanity,  2,  3,  19  ;  unalloyed,  60 ; 

of  Greek  states,  190. 
Humility,  60,  113. 


lacchos,  137. 
Iambic  writers,  102. 
Idealization  of  classical  world,  25. 
Idols,  v.  agalma ;  oldest  idols  were 

white  stones,  146. 
Immortal  soul,  16. 
Immortality,  v.  Chap.  VII. 
Infants,  exposure  of,  236,  248,  260. 
Intellectualists,  5. 
lonians,  56,  97. 
Isles  of  the  Blessed,  6,  74. 
Isocrates,  140,  251. 
Italians,  considering  themselves  as 

descendants  from  ancient  Latins, 

26,  35. 

J 

Jackson,  A.  V.  W.,  Prof. ,  of  Colum- 
bia University,  172. 

Jealousy,    among    Greek    cantons, 
167  sq. 

Jebb,  R.,  53. 

Jews,  5,  31  ;   Cicero  on  their  reli- 
gion, 356. 

Job,  Book  of,  58,  176. 

Johnson,  Samuel,  171. 

Julianus,  the  Apostate,  357. 

Justice,  96. 

K 

Kant,  4,  6. 

Kassandra,  unwilling  concubine,  60. 

Kelts,  13. 

Kirchhoff,  Adolph,  159,  208. 

Kleanthes,  277  sq. ;  his  hymn,  279. 


Kleobulos,  82. 

" Knabenschdndung,"  v.  Venus  Ca- 

nina,  287. 
Kronos,  74. 
Kumanudes,  308. 


Lachmann,  401. 

Lactantius,  109,  117. 

Laodicean  phrase,  107. 

Lascivissimus  versus,  87. 

Latin,  idealized  by  Dante,  26 ;  by 
Petrarch,  27 ;  Latin  verse  held  a 
means  of  human  immortality  by 
Humanists,  43. 

Latinity,  purer,  35. 

Laudatio  funebris,  330. 

Lear,  King,  98. 

Legends  and  Epics,  54 ;  vain  at- 
tempts to  refine  or  purge,  55,  63, 
148,  155,  169;  v.  Danae  and 
Ganymede ;  absence  of  moral  law, 
70,  101,  135. 

Leo  X,  44,  49. 

Leonidas,  167. 

Lesbian,  107  sq. 

Lessing,  4,  5,  91. 

Libanius  on  Christ,  358. 

Life  and  toil  in  Homer,  71 ;  gloomy 
views,  99,  187. 

Lobeck,  135,  147. 

Local  limitation  of  gods,  74. 

Loeb,  James,  translator  of  De- 
charme  on  Euripides,  209. 

L6gos,  a  lexical  lanus-face,  192. 

Lotze,  19. 

Love,  v.  Eros,  Erotic. 

Lucian,  48  ;  v.  Gildersleeve,  B.  L. 

Lucretius,  bitterness  and  earnest- 
ness, 382 ;  hatred  of  Etruscan 
discipline,  ib.',  seeks  emancipation 
of  Soul,  383 ;  faults  of  Universe, 
ib.;  Soul  to  him  is  material  and 
mortal,  384 ;  resignation,  385  ;  on 
death,  386 ;  bliss  of  extinction, 


446 


INDEX 


387  ;  Inferno,  i&. ;  origin  of  popu- 
lar Religion,  388 ;  phenomena  of 
sky,  389. 

Luke,  St.,  145. 

Lust,  v.  Eros  and  Erotic;  Sappho. 

Luther,  22,  45. 

M 

Macrobius,  363,  359. 

Madvig,  338. 

Maecenas,  moral  character  of,  396. 

Maha/y,  150,  154,  171,  188. 

Mankind,  erring  and  sinful,  98 ; 
best  for  man  not  to  be  born  at 
all,  99, 187  ;  gloomy  view,  102, 181, 
187  ;  ephemeral  man,  153  ;  civili- 
zation acquired  in  despite  of  gods, 
152,182  sq.;  essentials  of  human 
happiness,  162  sqq. ;  inherited  no- 
bleness, 185 ;  Greek  aspirations, 
187  ;  felicitation  before  death,  198; 
men  sport  of  gods,  199 ;  is  Life 
worth  living  ?  263,  265  ;  praise  of 
beasts  as  happier  than  man,  ib. 

Mark,  St.,  18. 

Mary,  St.,  the  Virgin,  44. 

Material  Culture,  2. 

Materialism,  224 ;  students  of  mat- 
ter, 433. 

Matrimony,  104  sqq. 

Matthew,  St.,  18,  34,  49. 

Medici,  Cosmo  dei,  37,  40,  42; 
Lorenzo,  43,  45,  46. 

Meier,  M.  H.  E.,  287. 

Meister,  Wilhelm,  10  sq. 

Men  measured  with  gods,  70. 

Menander,  mirror  of  Attic  life,  257 
sqq. 

Mendacity,  virtus,  A/JCTI),  of,  61. 

Merrill,  Prof.  Win.,  of  California, 
401. 

Messiah,  9. 

Metaphysics,  13. 

Microcosm  of  Greek  nationality,  61. 

Middle  Ages,  26,  38. 


Might  makes  Right,  113. 

Milton,  22. 

Mimnermos,  96. 

Missionary  Fervor,  why  impossible 
in  Classic  Religion,  353. 

Moderation,  self-control,  continence, 
V.  ff<a<t>poff6n}. 

Moira  (Fate,  Allotment),  57,  90. 

Mommsen,  4,  12  ;  Hegelianism,  ib., 
172,  312,  338,  374;  the  world- 
spirit,  380,  381. 

Montaigne,  25,  312. 

Morals,  morality,  6,  11  ;  of  Fable, 
92  ;  denial  of  moral  law  by  Pro- 
tagoras, 110;  level  of,  115;  sense 
of  limitations,  176  ;  false  conclu- 
sions from  Greek  art,  176  ;  source 
of  fall  of,  Ajax,  177  ;  revenge 
and  requital,  178  sq.  ;  conflict  be- 
tween civic  statutes  and  higher 
law,  181 ;  sin  must  be  associated 
with  consciousness,  185 ;  Mercy, 
186  ;  civic  laws  and  right  living, 
197  ;  chastity  central  theme  of  Eu- 
ripides's  "  Hippolytos,"  205  sq.  ; 
statutes  of  local  utility,  228,  233 ; 
tax  on  sexual  immorality,  letting 
out  of,  256  ;  paternal,  largely  de- 
termined by  questions  of  expense, 
260;  freedom  of  choice  essential 
in  goodness,  263;  of  Roman  so- 
ciety in  Seneca's  age,  425. 

More,  Sir  Thomas,  48. 

Mosaism,  31. 

Muller,  Karl  Ottfried,  361. 

Muller,  Lucian,  401. 

Munro,  401. 

Mysteries,  135  sq. 

Mythology,  v.  Roscher ;  Roman,  a 
misnomer,  341. 

N 

Naegelsbach,  C.  FT.,  57,  78,  130, 
147,  209 ;  speculation  no  basis  for 
Religion. 


INDEX 


447 


Naples,  1. 
Napoleon,  10,  12. 
Nathan  the  Wise,  5,  31. 
National,  character  of  Greeks,  167  ; 

limitation  of  ancient  religions,  74 

sqq. 
Necromancy,  Odyssey,  book  11 ;  cf. 

p.  161. 
Nemesis,  76. 
Neopagan  (v.  Nietzsche),  18,  117, 

124. 

Nestle,  194,  208. 
Niccoli,  36. 

Nicholas  V  (Parentucelli,  biblio- 
phile). 

Niebuhr,  312,  338. 
Nietzsche,  18. 
Nomenclature  of  Rivers  of  Inferno, 

69;    by    Hesiod,     73;    personal 

names,  312  sqq. 
Nude,  The,  in  Greek  art,  287,  310. 

O 

Odysseus,  type  of  Greeks,  61. 

Odyssey,  58. 

(Edipus,  Prince,  psychological  mas- 
terpiece, 179. 

Old  Believers  in  Rome,  358  sqq. 

Oracles  (v.  Delphi),  attitude  of 
Herodotus  towards,  166  ;  in  time 
of  Hadrian,  294  sq.,  305. 

Olympus,  Homeric,  ancient  critics, 
71  sq. 

Overbeck,  as  representative  of  ar- 
chaeological exaltation,  129. 

Ovid's  "Fasti,"  360. 

Oxford  and  Cambridge,  28. 


Paganism,  revived,  25 ;  v.  Nietz- 
sche; of  Humanists,  45;  Greek, 
dusk  of  (v.  Pausanias),  55,  63; 
blackest  cesspool,  255,  287 ; 
classic,  essence  of,  415. 

Panegyris,  79. 


Pantheism,  3,  4,  5,  8,  9,  11,  81, 
142  ;  v.  Stoics. 

Pascal,  Blaise,  17. 

Pater,  Walter,  46,  87. 

Paul,  St.,  18,  38,  78,  311,  426,  433. 

Paulsen,  118;  his  knowledge  of  the 
Classical  world  inadequate,  19. 

Pauly,  138. 

Pausanias  (traveller),  291  sq. ;  v. 
worship,  agalma,  Hadrian;  his 
genuine  affinity  with  Herodotus, 
292. 

Pelopidce,  curse  of  the,  158  sq. 

Penelope,  the  Lady  of  Ithaca, 
dragging  down  of,  103. 

Periander,  85. 

Periclean  Age,  173  sqq. 

Persephone,  115 ;  v.  Mysteries. 

Persian  invasions,  151,  162  sqq. 

Pervert,  107. 

Pessimism,  263. 

Peter,  St.,  146. 

Petrarch,  24,  27  sqq. 

Phceacians,  The,  73  sq. 

Pheidias,  287. 

Philemon,  263  sq. 

Philip,  King,  124,  248. 

Philo  ludceus,  119. 

Philochoros,  146. 

Phokylides,  97. 

Phryne,  the  courtesan,  her  statue  in 
the  temple  of  Delphi,  129  ;  and 
Praxiteles,  287. 

Piety,  Greek  (eiW/Seta),  142  ;  Plato 
on,  143  ;  essentially  a  conformity 
with  civic  institutions,  144. 

Pindar,  96,  111. 

Pittakos,  82. 

Pius  II,  Humanist  pope,  39. 

Plain  people  and  Culture,  11. 

Plato,  critic  of  Homer,  72  ;  on  legend 
of  Ganymede,  64 ;  on  Orphic 
mysteries,  140,  173,  222-236 ;  re- 
pelled by  flux  in  phenomena  of 
Nature,  223 ;  his  Ideas,  ib.;  felicity 


448 


INDEX 


of  soul,  ib. ;  Being  and  Becoming, 
223 ;  aversion  for  materialism, 
224 ;  orderliness  of  Universe,  ib.  ; 
goodness  of  God,  ib. ;  a  Pantheist, 
ib.  ;  abandons  the  idea  that  out- 
ward welfare  is  a  sure  sign  of 
divine  favor,  ib. ;  righteous  and 
unrighteous  man,  226 ;  opposed 
to  subjectivism,  226,  229  ;  Idea  of 
the  Good,  227  ;  God  and  Nature, 
ib. ;  the  practical  atheism  of  the 
unrighteous,  228  ;  assimilation  to 
God,  ib.,  229;  fate  of  souls,  228; 
Primacy  and  Eternity  of  soul,  ib. ; 
literary  style,  ib.  ;  Retribution 
after  death,  231  ;  on  the  true 
vision  of  the  moral  bearing  of 
things,  232 ;  Plato's  felicity  no 
worldly  felicity,  232 ;  on  Social 
Regeneration  :  his  concern  strictly 
limited  to  the  intellectual  elite, 
233 ;  aristocratic  ideals,  235  ;  low 
conception  of  love,  235 ;  view  of 
ethnic  gods,  236 ;  various  doc- 
trines with  reference  to  passages, 
249;  his  "Phsedo"  read  by  Cato 
in  last  hours,  at  Utica,  381. 

Plutarch,  85,  86,  87,  138,  139,  174, 
274  ;  furnishes  important  passages 
on  Stoicism,  288 ;  attempted  to 
maintain  popular,  actual  religion 
in  combination  with  Platonic  doc- 
trines of  soul,  289  ;  on  Atheism, 
290. 

Poggio,  33,  43. 

Politian,  Humanist  of  Florence,  43. 

Polybius,  317. 

Polykrates  of  Samos,  163. 

Pornos,  a  (v.  Eros,  Erotic,  Meier), 
87. 

Porphyry,  53,  134. 

Poseidon,  64. 

Positivism,  v.  Comte;  Positivist 
school  of  literary  criticism,  188. 

Praxiteles  and  his  model,  129,  287. 


Prayer,  65  sq.,  133, 178;  cf.  Worship. 

Preller,  138. 

Prometheus,  73,  75,  152,  182. 

Protagoras,  110,  192. 

Providence,  denied,  267  ;  asserted, 
v.  Stoics. 

Ptolemies,  126. 

Purity,  60,  112. 

Pythagoras,  critic  of  Homer's 
Olympus,  71 ;  his  doctrines  hi 
Pindar's  verse,  114;  Pythagore- 
ans, 114  sq.  ;  purity  of  soul,  134. 


Quattrocento,  The  Italian,  45. 

Quintiliari1  s  moral  condemnation  of 
Greek  lyrics,  36,  38,  107  ;  on  the 
futility  of  micrology  in  mytho- 
logical studies,  78. 

R 

Rationalistic  millennium,  5. 

Reason,  6. 

Refining  and  purging  exegesis,  63. 

Religion,  Homeric  level  of,  101 ;  of 
impurity  at  Babylon  and  Corinth, 
110;  Piety  (etW0eta),  114;  suffi- 
ciency of  Ritual,  115 ;  low  level 
of  righteousness,  116 ;  intrinsic 
worthlessness  of  Greek  Religion, 
116 ;  theory  of,  and  worship  of 
heroes,  119  sq. ;  Egyptians  had  not 
this  cult,  120 ;  heroes  of  Attica, 
120;  Delphi,  source  of  authority  for 
current  questions  of,  120  ;  Persian 
contempt  for  Greek  worship,  121 ; 
local  heroes,  ib. ;  at  Platsea,  122 ; 
apotheosis  of  the  living,  123  sqq.  ; 
fundamental  weakness  of  Greek 
Religion,  141 ;  of  the  Eleusinian 
mysteries,  141  sq.  ;  essence  of 
Greek  Piety  denned,  143;  reli- 
gious acts  bound  up  with  seasons, 
143 ;  ascertaining  proper  locality 
of  worship,  145 ;  necromancy, 


INDEX 


449 


151 ;  objects  of  Greek  worship, 
156  ;  Earth  in,  156  ;  fear  of  power 
of  heroes  after  their  death,  156 ; 
current  standard  of  Greek  Keligion 
in  480  B.C.,  166 ;  right  of  burial, 
178 ;  Fear  and  Dread  chief  ele- 
ments, 182 ;  why  Zeus  to  be 
feared,  182 ;  absurdity  of  using 
Christian  or  modern  terminology 
in  connection  with  ancient  reli- 
gion, 193  ;  absurdity  of  using  the 
term  of  Faith,  195 ;  tutelary 
powers,  198  ;  attitude  of  Eurip- 
ides, 202  sq. ;  conformity  of 
Socrates  to  Attic,  217  ;  civic  and 
religious  duties  convertible,  218 ; 
prayer  of  Socrates,  219  ;  sacrilege 
condoned,  253 ;  worship  by 
wicked  men,  266 ;  ritual  mocked 
by  Menander,  266 ;  Epicurus  on 
the  religious  ideas  of  the  Many, 
272  sg. ;  actual  feeling  of  wor- 
shippers described  by  Plutarch, 
290 ;  limitations  of  tutelary  deities, 
294. 

Religious  doctrine,  political  in- 
fluence of,  14 ;  of  Comte,  15. 

"Religiosi,"  The,  in  the  Renais- 
sance, 32,  38,  43. 

Ritschl,  Fr.,  312,  374. 

Renaissance,  33  sg. ;  as  resurrec- 
tion of  paganism,  37  ;  painters  of 
the,  52  ;  of  Hadrian,  291  sg. 

Repristination  of  letters,  51. 

Responsibility,  moral,  declined  by 
Homeric  heroes,  70. 

Retribution,  66,  99,  116. 

Reuchlin,  50. 

Rhythm,  96. 

Ribbeck,  O.,  401. 

Riess,  Ernst,  361. 

Righteousness,  88 ;  no  religious 
character  in,  100  ;  Pindar  no  con- 
sistent prophet  of,  115. 

Rite  and  Ritual,  at  Eleusis,  138  sg. ; 
2o 


criticism  of  same,  140 ;  of  Orphic, 
ib. ;  at  Rome,  346  sg. 

Roman  Religion,  free  from  vicious 
legends,  341 ;  their  dignity  and 
decorum  in  worship  praised  by  a 
Greek,  341 ;  religio,  religiones, 
study  of  these  terms,  345  sg.  ;  offi- 
cial hierarchy,  347  ;  Jupiter  and 
hisFlamen,  347  sg.  ;  Lord  of  light, 
348 ;  Etruscan  discipline,  349 ; 
fixed  formularies,  verba  concepta, 
350 ;  contract  of  State  with  gods, 
ib. ;  simulacra  driven  in  procession 
before  Circensian  games,  351 ; 
how  to  humor  the  gods,  351 ; 
sacrifices,  ib.;  all  terms  of  religious 
usage  obsolete  to  current  under- 
standing from  their  extreme  an- 
tiquity, 352  sg. ;  invitation  to 
foreign  or  hostile  gods  to  transmi- 
grate to  Rome,  353 ;  Grcecus 
ritus  no  spiritual  progression  for 
Romans,  354 ;  deification  of  Ab- 
stractions, 354  ;  Cicero  on  forms 
of  worship,  365 ;  soundness  of  a 
state  religion  held  to  be  proven  by 
the  outward  faring  of  that  state, 
356 ;  last  stand  of  the  Old  Be- 
lievers in  Rome,  357  sgg. ;  Sym- 
machus  essentially  agnostic  as  to 
the  deeper  meaning  or  basis  of 
human  religions,  359  sg. ;  Neo- 
platonism,  361. 

Romance,  absence  of,  171. 

Romans,  The,  3  ;  "grratn'tas"  of,  97  ; 
their  phrase  ofpergrcecari,  98;  how 
they  progressed  in  government, 
318;  regard  for  authority  and 
property,  318 ;  patria  potestas, 
319 ;  civil  law,  ib. ;  guardianship 
conceived  as  a  public  duty,  320 ; 
Infamia,  Culpa,  and  Dolus,  ib. 
sq.  ;  unfriendly  to  mere  innova- 
tion, 322 ;  preference  for  rustic 
life,  ib. ;  severity  and  sternness, 


450 


INDEX 


323 ;  sumptuary  laws,  ib. ;  utili- 
tarian trend,  324  ;  Frugi,  325 ; 
cruelty,  325 ;  military  laws,  ib.  ; 
slavery,  ib. ;  property  triumphed 
over  humanity,  326 ;  flogging,  ib.; 
the  cross,  327 ;  Patronus  and 
Libertus,  328  sq. ;  civic  ambition 
powerfully  kindled  by  funerals  of 
the  aristocracy,  329  sq. ;  parental 
principle  in  their  institutions,  331 ; 
euphemism  of  political  terms, 
331 ;  stubborn  exclusiveness,  332  ; 
political  morality  in  conquest, 
333  sqq.  ;  moral  corruption  re- 
sulting from  exploitation,  335 ; 
Greek  culture,  336 ;  hatred  of 
provincials  for,  ib. ;  conceit  of, 
337 ;  as  transmitters  of  Greek  cul- 
ture, 338. 

Some,  1,  3  ;  as  described  by  Polyb- 
ius,  317  aq. 

Roscher's  Lexicon  of  Mythology, 
ogling  article  in,  64  ;  appreciation 
of,  78. 

Rousseau,  2,  7,  60. 

Rousseauism,  11,  60,  163. 

Ruskin,  22 ;  his  attitude  to  Chris- 
tianity, ib. 


Sacrifice,  imposes  obligation  on 
gods,  66  ;  symbolism  of  purifica- 
tion, ib.,  67;  to  heroes,  120;  at 
Plataea,  122 ;  to  the  dead,  179,  v. 
Worship. 

Sallust,  366,  378. 

Salve  caput  cruentatum,  52. 

Sand,  Madame,  6. 

Sappho,  106  sq. ;  v.  Eros. 

Satyrs,  and  Pan,  34  ;  and  Sileni,  101. 

Schaefer,  Arnold,  252. 

Schiller,  Fr.,  55,  135, 163. 

Schism,  the  great,  33. 

Schoemann,  65,  73,  77. 

Scriptures,  revival  of  the,  48. 


Sellar,  401. 

Seneca,  L.  Annseus,  on  Maecenas, 
396  sq. ;  style,  402 ;  birth,  ib. ; 
philosophical  teachers  of,  403 ; 
susceptible  in  youth  to  spiritual 
impressions,  404 ;  culture,  405  ; 
exile,  ib. ;  consolation  and  pride, 
406 ;  tricks  of  courtier,  406 ;  re- 
called, 407  ;  services  to  Nero,  ib. ; 
great  wealth,  407  sq.  ;  practical 
view  of  philosophy,  contempt  for 
sciolism,  409 ;  on  Universe,  on 
"Nature,"  categorical  postulate  of 
goodness,  411  sq.  ;  God  and 
divine  Reason,  412  ;  "  Nature  " 
and  God  interconvertible  terms, 
412;  on  superstition,  413;  con- 
tempt for  actual  Roman  worship, 
ib. ;  opposed  to  worship  of  power, 
415 ;  conformity  to  "Nature,"  415 ; 
prayer  impossible,  414;  hatred 
for  conquerors  and  autocrats,  415 ; 
Stoic  Saints,  416;  on  righteous- 
ness, 417  ;  freedom  from  passions, 
ib. ;  on  boons,  ib.  ;  on  death,  417  ; 
on  suicide,  418 ;  vacillation  as 
to  hereafter,  418  sq. ;  influence  of 
Plato,  419 ;  "  we  are  ripening  for 
another  birth,"  ib.  ;  Seneca  and 
St.  Paul,  420;  resemblances  to 
Christianity,  420  sqq. ;  "  to  obey 
God  is  Freedom,"  421 ;  our  physi- 
cal being  merely  loaned  to  us,  ib. ; 
the  soul  alone,  not  sex  or  civil 
station,  determines  the  dignity  of 
man,  422  ;  on  aristocratic  society 
of  his  day,  425 ;  spiritual  pride, 
434. 

Servius,  145 ;  one  of  the  Old  Be- 
lievers of  Rome,  359 ;  Varronian 
data  in  Servian  scholia,  why,  360. 

Seven  Wise  Men,  79. 

Sexual  joys,  96,  104. 

Seymour,  Prof.  T.  D.,  63,  77. 

Shaftesbury,  3,  22. 


INDEX 


451 


Shakespeare,  his  women,  110 ; 
Hamlet's  soliloquy,  142. 

Sigismund,  emperor,  40. 

Sihler,  E.G.,  aim  of  this  work,  143, 
148,  196,  294 ;  Berlin  days,  159 ; 
dissent  from  Usener,  288 ;  on 
academic  deities,  311 ;  on  Lucre- 
tius, 401 ;  on  Cicero's  political 
character,  381. 

Simian,  creed,  311 ;  mythology, 
433. 

Simonides  of  Amorgos,  102  sq. 

Simonides  of  Keos,  84,  193. 

Simulacra  of  gods  driven  in  public 
shows,  351. 

Sin,  21,  94,  99 ;  of  Ajax,  177  ;  ini- 
tial, beginning  of  curse,  158,  159, 
185-186  ;  Humanists  ignored,  51, 
65. 

Singers  in  Homeric  Age,  54. 

Slaves,  422 ;  slave-wars,  327;  v. 
Aristotle,  246. 

Socrates,  210  sqq. ;  seeks  truth  else- 
where than  in  physical  problems, 
211  ;  his  noble  error  that  right 
insight  must  cause  right  action, 
212,  220 ;  primacy  of  soul  in  his 
valuations,  212 ;  Xenophon  and 
Plato,  ib. ;  universality  of  his  gifts 
of  character,  ib. ;  and  Delphi,  213 ; 
theory  of  morality,  213 ;  value  of 
given  man  determined  by  expert 
knowledge,  214 ;  power  of  his  per- 
sonality, 215;  on  adultery,  216; 
conforms  to  his  community  in 
views  of  unchastity,  217 ;  con- 
formity to  state  religion,  ib. ;  ig- 
nores questionable  legends,  218; 
lofty  religious  conceptions,  219 ; 
on  rationality  immanent  in  Na- 
ture, 219;  his  death,  220  sqq. ; 
caricature  of,  by  Aristophanes, 
221 ;  on  Sparta,  ib. ;  and  his 
daimonion,  222  ;  Seneca  on,  416. 

Sodom,  Apples  of,  110. 


Solon,  53,  86  sqq. ;  moralizing  of, 
88  ;  and  Croasus,  162. 

Sophists,  191  sq. ;  difference  from 
Humanists,  ib. 

Sophocles,  139,  173  sqq. ;  themes 
from  Trojan  Cycle,  175 ;  on  Eros, 
176;  affinity  for  Herodotus,  178; 
Homeric  level,  180 ;  spirit  of 
^Eschylus  and  Herodotus,  183 ; 
Requiem  of  the  old  master,  185  ; 
native  deme,  186 ;  reader  of  He- 
rodotus, 188. 

ffw<j>po<r<jvT)  (Sophrosyne),  93,  97, 
99. 

Soul,  departed,  100  ;  primacy  of,  v. 
Plato,  Socrates,  Stoics. 

Spain  and  Rome,  402. 

Spartans,  12,  189,  221 ;  condemned 
by  Athenians  for  their  aversion 
to  culture,  252. 

Speculation  no  basis  for  Religion, 
209. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  false  valuation 
of  Man,  Preface ;  cf .  4,  14,  53. 

Spinoza,  3. 

Statues,  9. 

Stobceus,  83. 

Stoics,  Stoicism,  injecting  their  doc- 
trine into  Homer,  72  ;  cf .  38,  42  ; 
aversion  for  autocrats  and  con- 
querors, 123 ;  on  Alexander,  125 ; 
most  virile  revelation  of  Greek 
mind,  274 ;  Zeno  of  Kition,  275- 
277  ;  associations  of  the  Painted 
Porch,  275 ;  Athens  decrees  hon- 
ors, 276 ;  elevation  of  Self-control 
and  Freedom,  277 ;  Kleanthes, 
277;  his  book,  "Virtue  of  Man 
and  Woman  is  the  same,"  278  ; 
Chrysippos  of  Soloi,  278;  pan- 
theistic drift  of  Stoic  system,  278 ; 
"God,  Intelligence,  Fate,  Zeus," 
different  names  of  same  Being, 
279;  Hymn  of  Kleanthes,  279- 
281 ;  "  Nature,"  an  academic 


452 


INDEX 


creation  of  the  Stoic  system,  281 ; 
conformity  with  Universe,  282 ; 
conception  of  Design  :  orderliness 
of  Universe  engendered  idea  of 
God,  282 ;  allegorizing  interpre- 
tation of  mythology,  283  ;  Theory 
of  morals :  conduct  universally 
obligatory  to  be  chosen  —  Kant 
anticipated,  284 ;  Evil,  285 ; 
Boons  :  classification  of,  positive, 
neutral,  ib.  ;  lofty  Ethics,  ib. ;  on 
Passions  and  Emotions,  286; 
Spiritual  pride,  286. 

Suidas,  148. 

Superstition  (v.  Biess"),  76. 

Suringar,  381. 

Swinburne,  22. 

Symbolism,  2,  55,  61,  65,  67,  76,  92, 
132,  150,  299. 

Symmachus  and  the  Old  Believers 
in  Rome,  in  the  generation  of  St. 
Ambrose  and  the  emperor  Theo- 
dosius,  359. 

Symonds,  John  Addington,  24. 


Terence,  65. 

Testament,  New,  48,  49. 

Thackeray,  6. 

Thales,  80. 

Themistios,  138. 

Theocritus,  37. 

Theodicy,  178!. 

Theodosius,  358. 

Theognis,  98. 

Theogony,  55. 

Theseus,  121. 

Thirlwall,  22. 

Thucydides,  172 ;  on  Athens,  189. 

Timothy,  St.,  49. 

Tolman,  Prof.  H.  C.,  of  Vanderbilt, 
172. 

Tragedy,  Attic,  themes,  171;  ces- 
sation of,  188  ;  v.  Wilamowitz. 

Tragical  conflict,  171. 


Tutelary  deities,  306. 
Tyrrell,  Prof.  R.  Y.,  381. 


Ulysses,  v.  Odysseus. 

Undergods  of  Zeus,  68. 

Unnatural  lust,  86  sq. ;   v.   Venus 

Canina,    Eros,    Erotic,    Meier ; 

Socrates  on,  216  ;  cf.  287. 
Usener,  H.,  the  Polyhistor  of  Bonn, 

288. 
Utilitarian  Ethics,  92,  95. 


Valla,  Lorenzo,  35,  38,  43. 

Varro,  studied  by  the  Old  Believers 
at  Rome,  359 ;  his  theories,  360. 

Venus  Canina,  v.  Eros,  Erotic, 
Unnatural  lust;  cf.  101,  150. 

Vergil,  25  sq. ;  his  jEneid,  342; 
bible  of  Old  Believers  at  Rome, 
359. 

Verrall,  194,  208. 

Villani,  26. 

Villari,  46. 

Vinci,  L.  da,  52. 

Virtus  (=  Excellence,  or  some  spe- 
cific faculty  or  power),  366,  379, 
401,  406. 

Voigt,  Georg,  24. 

W 

Wealth,  88,  90,  98,  113. 

Weariness  from  classicism,  24. 

Wecklein,  172. 

Weimar,  10. 

Weissenfels,  1. 

Welcker,   moral  callosity  of,    110 ; 

overstatement  by,  131,  173. 
Werther,  in  petticoats,  8. 
Wickedness,  prosperous,  problem  of, 

99,  176. 

Wilamowitz,  159,  188,  310. 
Winckelmann,  8,  87,  101,  116. 
Wissowa,  130,  147;  his  admirable 


INDEX 


453 


treatise  on  Roman  Religion,  353, 
361. 

Woman,  102  sq.,  104  sq.,  116;  ab- 
sence of  chivalry  in  treatment  of, 
171 ;  Antigone,  181 ;  Deianira, 
183;  miserable  position  of  Attic 
matron,  269. 

World-spirit,  380. 

Worship  of  Greeks,  93;  heroes  in, 
120  sq. ;  Stoic  theory,  283 ;  acts 
of,  communal,  289 ;  iopr-fj,  ib. ; 
described  by  Plutarch,  290-291; 
joyous  share  in  ritual,  ib. ;  Pausa- 
nias,  his  work  and  personality, 
291 ;  idol  (agalma)  chief  object 
of,  296 ;  enumeration  of  acts  of, 
by  Pollux,  296 ;  the  xoanon,  or 
wooden  idol,  297 ;  transportation 
of  idols,  297  ;  oldest  most  honored, 
298  sq. ;  Peaks  in  worship  of  Zeus, 
297 ;  local  beginnings  of  certain 
forms  of,  297 ;  requirements  for 
priests  or  priestesses,  297 ;  worship 
of  Aphrodite  came  through  Tyrian 
traders,  299-300 ;  pantomimic  rit- 
ual, 301 ;  worship  of  Hadrian's 
boy-concubine,  301 ;  comeliest 
youth  chosen,  300 ;  purchase  of 
priesthood,  305 ;  priests  must  be 
experts  in  ritual,  302;  their  per- 
quisites, 304  sq. ;  qualifications  of 
worshippers,  303 ;  purification,  ib. 


sq.;  object  of  prayers,  304;  ex- 
clusiveness  and  local  pride,  306; 
brotherhoods  or  sodalities,  307; 
preeminence  of  oldest  idol  with- 
out regard  to  its  artistic  excel- 
lence, 310;  Roman,  340  sqq.  •  in 
furtherance  of  agriculture,  342 
sqq. ;  exact  formularies  of  pro- 
cedure, 343  sq. ;  quasi-contractual 
type  of  formularies,  344;  mos 
maiorum,  344 ;  Cicero  on  worship, 
355  sq. 

X 

Xenophanes,  censures  Greek  le- 
gends, 72. 

Xenophon,  143  sq.,  and  Socrates,  213; 
sterling  qualities  of,  218. 


Zeller,  Eduard,  146;  Hegelianism 
of,  249. 

Zeus,  65 ;  rarely  a  moral  force,  56 ; 
fatherhood  of,  limited  to  aristoc- 
racy, 66  ;  and  Fate,  57 ;  Overgod, 
68 ;  retribution  of,  89;  "  Salacis- 
simus,"  117;  ^Eschylus  attempts 
to  elevate  the  conception  of,  154 
sq. ;  slave  of  lust,  henpecked,  155 ; 
cited  for  unchastity,  205. 

Zielinski,  208. 

Zoological  philosophers,  2;  units, 
21. 


I 


III 


I 


